BRIEF    ESSAYS 

AND 

BREVITIES 


BRIEF    ESSAYS 


BREVITIES 


BY 

GEORGE  H.  CALVERT 


BOSTON : 
LEE   AND   SHEPARD,   PUBLISHERS. 

NEW  YORK  : 

LEE,  SHEPARD  AND  DILLINGHAM. 
1874. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1874,  by 

GEORGE  H.  CALVERT, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


RIVERSIDE,  CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED  AND  PRINTED  BY 

H.  O-  HOUGHTON  AND  COMPANY. 


CONTENTS. 


ESSAYS. 

I.  EARTHLINGS 9 

II.  LADYHOOD 12 

IIL  GENIUS  AND  TALENT 17 

IV.  ARISTOCRACY 22 

V.  ORGANIZATION 29 

VI.  WORK 35 

VII.  SOCIAL  PALACE  AT  GUISE       ....  42 

VIII.   WORLDLINESS 49 

IX.  ART 55 

X.  TRAVEL 61 

XI.  OBEDIENCE 70 

XII.  FREEDOM 73 

XIII.  THE  BRAIN 78 

XIV.  MATERIALISM 90 

XV.  THE  LIFE  TO  COME 96 

XVI.  BOOKS  FOR  BOYS 106 

XVII.  F.  W.  ROBINSON     . 115 

XVIII.  GOETHE'S  FAUST 123 

XIX.  SHELLEY 129 

XX.  SHAKESPEARE 140 

XXI.  THE  MERCHANT  OK  VENICE   ....  149 


6  CONTENTS. 

XXII.  TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW      .        .       .        .  154 

XXIII.  THE  TEMPEST 157 

XXIV.  MACBETH 167 

XXV.  HAMLET 177 

BREVITIES. 

I.  SPIRITUAL,  MORAL 193 

II.  LITERARY,  ^ESTHETICAL 208 

III.  CONDUCT,  MANNERS ; •    •.  239 

IV.  MISCELLANEOUS      .                      ....  255 


BRIEF   ESSAYS. 


BRIEF   ESSAYS. 


EARTHLINGS. 

WHEN  one  has  just  spent  an  hour  in  a  police 
court  or  the  "  Tombs,"  or  reads  of  the  diver- 
sified daily  crimes  by  countless  criminals,  or 
dipping  personally  into  Wall  Street,  feels  him- 
self a  party  to  the  selfish  scramble  which  makes 
up  so  much  of  life,  or  tries  to  count  the  lies 
that  are  sneaking  or  buzzing  about,  or  thinks 
of  the  manifold  rascalities,  rampant  or  covert, 
and  the  multiform  sensualities  that  darken  and 
deform  humanity, — one  might,  in  certain  moods, 
be  misled  to  Believe  that  man  is,  after  all,  but  a 
low,  creeping  slave,  the  dupe  of  vulgar  desires 
and  ignoble  impulses,  a  restless,  insatiable 
earthling.  Earthling  though  he  be,  his  eye 
carries  his  thought  up  to  stars  whose  light  has 
been  thousands  of  years  in  reaching  him ;  and 
there,  his  inward  vision  dazzled  with  the  tran- 
scendent grandeur  of  creation,  he  is  at  once 


10  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

humbled  and  exalted  ;  and  humility  and  exalta- 
tion both  attest  a  higher  than  a  mere  earthly 
being. 

Within  his  magnetic  brain  are  other  cham- 
bers, built  to  be  opened  to  deeper  medita- 
tion, to  be  illuminated  by  still  finer  light. 
"  Only  by  celestial  observations  can  terrestrial 
charts  be  constructed,"  says  Jean  Paul.  In 
man  there  is  an  upper  heavenly  sphere ;  only 
by  help  of  this  can  be  instituted  and  conducted 
an  orderly  human  life.  Unguided,  untempered 
by  these  nobler  capacities,  even  the  lower  could 
not  accomplish  their  specific  functions.  Here 
is  the  celestial  canopy  which  gives  amplitude 
and  security  to  man's  being.  The  vaulting 
sweep  of  disinterested  feeling,  open  to  men, 
constitutes  their  humanity,  their  divine  hu- 
manity. Without  the  breadth  and  freedom  of 
this  upper  range,  men  were  not  men,  but  a 
herd  of  low-cropping  bipeds.  Take  from  a 
man  his  capacity  to  be  just,  to  be  charitable, 
to  bound  up  from  the  very  depths  of  despair 
upon  ever-surging  waves  of  hope,  to  feel  at 
times  a  thrill  shoot  through  him  from  Infini- 
tude, —  cut  him  off  from  all  this,  and  you  dis- 
crown him,  you  disorb  him.  By  no  intellectual 
projection,  by  no  scientific  dexterity,  can  he  be 


EARTHLINGS.  1 1 

launched  and  upheld  on  his  proper  path.  Only 
the  power  of  trustful  intuition,  of  a  sure  moral 
sensibility,  can  lift  and  hold  him  to  his  human 
track.  Destroy  this  power,  and  he  flounders  in 
the  mire  of  animalism.  A  more  appalling  sight 
could  not  be  than  a  scientific  animal,  a  being 
endowed  only  with  impulse  and  full  intellect. 
And  think  (if  the  imagination  can  stretch 
itself  to  such  an  abstraction)  of  a  tribe  of 
such  :  I  do  not  say  community,  for  community 
there  could  not  be,  that  implying  an  organized 
combination  for  the  general  good  ;  and  where 
men  were  purely  selfish,  there  could  be  no  per- 
manent combination,  no  tenacious  apportion- 
ment. Think  of  a  crowd  of  Calibans  and  sons 
of  Mephistopheles  :  nay,  a  crowd  even  of  such 
miscreations  could  not  be.  Either,  they  would 
fly  asunder  by  mutual  repulsion,  or  assail  each 
other's  being  ruthlessly  and  destructively.  But 
the  beauty  and  grandeur  of  the  divine  scheme 
exclude  such  monsters.  In  the  worst  speci- 
mens of  our  kind,  in  a  Nero  or  a  Borgia, 
there  stirs  the  germ  of  the  generic  and  noble. 
Through  the  darkest  and  coldest  nature  pene- 
trates somewhat  of  the  light  from  a  holy  inter- 
nal fire.  Did  there  not,  the  individual  would 
shiver  and  burst  in  his  own  icy  darkness.  Pure 
blrick  cannot  be. 


II. 

LADYHOOD. 

EXAMPLES  of  ladyhood  should  not  be  sought 
in  the  Sultan's  seraglio  ;  for  ladyhood  implies 
independence  of  spirit  and  womanly  self-re- 
spect, with  ableness  for  self-direction  ;  nor 
would  one  look  for  the  higher  illustrations  in 
a  community  coarse  and  unfashioned  ;  for  la- 
dyhood is  an  emanation  from  the  heart,  sub- 
tilized by  culture.  Nor  would  you  be  likely  to 
come  upon  the  finer  type  among  the  rings  of 
the  garish,  bedizened,  recurrent  whirl  of  fash- 
ion ;  for  a  continued  blaze  of  publicity  is  no 
more  favorable  to  the  growth  of  ladyhood  than 
is  gas-light  to  the  ripening  of  rose-buds.  La- 
dies of  the  purest  water  hesitate  not  to  enter 
Broadway,  but  they  neither  seek  nor  enjoy  an 
ostentatious  thoroughfare.  The  glare  of  its 
gaze,  if  too  often  submitted  to,  dries  the  au- 
roral moisture  which  glistens  on  the  counte- 
nance of  ladyhood,  —  aye,  glistens  when  years 
have  pinched  the  smoothness  of  outward  beauty. 

Only  through  example  and  authority  can  the 


LADYHOOD.  13 

lady  be  unfolded.  The  earthly  angel  01  girl- 
hood is  matronly  womanhood,  ever  hovering 
near  its  trust.  Youth,  permitted  to  be  un- 
bound and  irreverent,  runs  into  excesses,  which 
sap  its  chasteness  and  its  strength.  Of  ado- 
lescence maturity  is  the  guardian  appointed  by 
nature  ;  and  nature  ever  punishes  with  impris- 
onment a  breach  of  her  mandates.  The  guard- 
ianship of  matrons  over  girls  is  the  guardian- 
ship of  their  freedom  ;  and  freedom  not  thus 
guarded,  carries  a  latent  chain  in  its  temporary 
license. 

Any,  even  the  slightest,  decrement  of  mod- 
esty lays  a  weight  upon  the  spring  of  ladyhood, 
whose  essence  is  a  refined  womanly  self-con- 
sciousness. Nature's  choicest  product  is  wo- 
man ;  and  modesty  being  the  interior  fount 
that  suffuses  her  with  spiritual  bloom,  lady- 
hood, as  the  consummate  flower,  the  florescent 
acme,  of  womanhood,  a  distillation  from  its  su- 
perlatives, draws  from  this  fount  a  perennial 
freshness.  Thence,  the  wealthiest  dower  where- 
with a  maiden  can  enter  womanhood  is  modest 
reserve.  From  this  deep,  clear,  sparkling 
source  are  recruited  all  the  feminine  virtues 
of  her  life.  We  say  modest  reserve  ;  for  there 
is  a  cold  and  a  proud  reserve,  and  these  are 


1 4  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

barren.  Modesty  implies  warmth,  and  a  living 
store  of  power  ;  denotes  impulses,  emotions, 
desires,  to  be  directed,  protected,  controlled  ; 
and  reserve  betokens  capacity  to  protect  and 
control  this  palpitating  material  of  conduct. 

"  All  integrants  of  being,  the  low  and  higher, 
The  lords  of  work,  the  visionary  powers, 
Leap  with  the  lightnings  of  a  holier  fire," 

in  a  woman  whose  speech  and  bearing  are  ever 
thus  guarded.  A  lady  of  the  highest  type  is 
the  unmatched 

"  Delight  of  whate'er  lives  and  wills  and  loves, 
The  central  majesty  to  all  that  moves  ;  " 

and  to  be  this,  her  life  must  be  steadied,  re- 
freshed, empowered  by  modest  reserve. 

Does  it  seem  that  in  estimating  ladyhood  I 
set  too  much  store  by  purity  and  continence, 
the  wardens  of  a  treasure  whose  unspeakable 
value  is  only  revealed  by  what  is  missed  when 
it  is  lost.  Whoever  called  a  lorette  a  lady  ? 
Among  the  richest  in  physical  beauty  and  in 
wit  she  may  be,  with  generosity  even  of  heart ; 
but  so  poor  is  she  spiritually,  there  is  none  will 
do  her  reverence.  Fallen  from  her  height  of 
womanhood,  none  now  looks  up  to  her.  She 
has  forfeited  her  eminence,  and  lives  without 


LADYHOOD.  15 

honor,  without  command,  without  obedience. 
She  is  scarcely  a  person,  is  become  almost  a 
thing.  Her  being  is  blind  with  the  gloom  of 
self-destruction.  The  threads  wherewith  is 
woven  the  exquisite  veil  of  ladyhood  —  a  veil 
protective,  which  is  a  transparent  beautifier  — 
must  themselves  be  wrought  of  cleanest  mate- 
rial, their  delicate  fineness  proceeding  from 
their  strength,  and  their  strength  from  their 
purity.  Not  an  outward  gauze,  not  a  super- 
added  screen  is  this  veil ;  it  is  self-spun,  inly 
woven,  a  spiritual  lacework,  only  traceable  in 
the  flush  of  its  twinkle,  the  subtlest  of  mag- 
netic auras,  permeating  and  illuminating  with 
delicate  light  the  finer  fibres  of  conduct. 

If  the  nest  wherein  ladyhood  is  hatched  be 
modesty,  out  of  beauty,  spiritual  beauty,  are 
wrought  the  wings  wherewith  it  soars  to  its 
serene  dominance.  Of  the  higher  type  of  la- 
dyhood may  always  be  said  what  Steele  said 
of  Lady  Elizabeth  Hastings,  that  "  unaffected 
freedom  and  conscious  innocence  gave  her  the 
attendance  of  the  graces  in  all  her  actions." 
At  its  highest,  ladyhood  implies  a  spirituality 
made  manifest  in  poetic  grace.  From  the  lady 
there  exhales  a  subtler  magnetism.  Uncon- 
sciously she  circles  herself  with  an  atmosphere 


1 6  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

of  unruffled  strength,  which,  to  those  who 
come  into  it,  gives  confidence  and  repose. 
Within  her  influence  the  diffident  grow  self- 
possessed,  the  impudent  are  checked,  the  in- 
considerate admonished  ;  even  the  rude  are 
constrained  to  be  mannerly,  and  the  refined 
are  perfected  ;  all  spelled  unawares  by  the 
charm  of  the  flexible  dignity,  the  commanding 
gentleness,  the  thorough  womanliness  of  her 
look,  speech,  and  demeanor.  A  sway  is  this 
purely  spiritual.  Every  sway,  every  legitimate, 
every  enduring,  sway  is  spiritual,  a  regnancy 
of  light  over  obscurity,  of  right  over  brutality. 
The  only  real  gains  we  ever  make  are  spiritual 
gains,  —  a  further  subjection  of  the  gross  to  the 
incorporal,  of  body  to  soul,  of  the  animal  to 
the  human.  The  finest,  the  most  characteris- 
tic acts  of  a  lady  involve  a  spiritual  ascension, 
a  going  out  of  herself.  In  her  being  and  bear- 
ing, patience,  benignity,  generosity,  are  the 
graces  that  give  shape  to  the  virtues  of  truth- 
fulness. In  the  radiant  reality  of  ladyhood  the 
artificial  and  the  conventional  are  naught.  Dif- 
ferent from,  opposite  to,  the  superpositions  of 
art,  or  the  dictates  of  mode,  is  the  culture  of 
the  innate,  the  unfolding  of  the  living  ;  as  dif- 
ferent as  the  glow  of  health  is  from  the  cos- 
metic stain  that  would  counterfeit  its  tint. 


III. 

GENIUS    AND    TALENT. 

CRUDEN'S  and  Mrs.  Cowden  Clarke's  "  Con- 
cordances "  show  that  in  the  Bible  the  word 
genius  is  never  found,  the  word  talent  only  as 
a  measure  of  money  ;  and  that  in  Shakespeare 
genius  (occurring  but  seven  times)  stands  for 
guardian  spirit  or  what  is  akin,  and  of  the 
fourteen  times  that  talent  is  read,  ten  are  in 
"  Timon,"  being  there  always  used  in  the  an- 
cient Athenian  sense,  as  a  standard  of  money- 
value.  In  the  prolific  Elizabethan  period,  and 
for  some  time  later,  these  two  words  had  not 
set  themselves  into  the  important  positions 
they  have  since  held  in  the  language.  Im- 
portant we  call  them,  for  the  two  express  so 
much  of  the  inward  mysterious  power,  and  the 
varied  aptitudes  of  the  human  mind,  that  their 
suppression  now  were  a  laming  of  habitual  ut- 
terance. Hence  their  so  frequent  use  in  criti- 
cism and  conversation,  and  hence  the  endeavor 
of  critics  and  aestheticians  to  define  the  mean- 


1 8  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

ing  of  each,  and  to  distinguish  the  one  from 
the  other. 

Genius  is  of  the  soul,  talent  of  the  under- 
standing. Genius  is  warm,  talent  is  passion- 
less. Without  genius  there  is  no  intuition, 
no  inspiration  ;  without  talent,  no  execution. 
Genius  is  interior,  talent  exterior  ;  hence  ge- 
nius is  productive,  talent  accumulative.  Genius 
invents,  talent  accomplishes.  Genius  gives  the 
substance ;  talent  works  it  up  under  the  eye, 
or,  rather,  under  the  feeling  of  genius.  Genius 
is  emotional,  talent  intellectual  ;  hence  genius 
is  creative,  and  talent  instrumental.  Genius 
has  insight,  talent  only  outsight.  Genius  is 
always  calm,  reserved,  self-centred  ;  talent  is 
often  bustling,  officious,  confident.  Genius 
gives  the  impulse  and  aim  as  well  as  the  illu- 
mination, talent  the  means  and  implements. 
Genius,  in  short,  is  the  central,  finer  essence 
of  the  mind,  the  self-lighted  fire,  the  intuitional 
gift.  Talent  gathers  and  shapes  and  applies 
what  genius  forges.  Talent  is  ever  approach- 
ing, and  yet  never  reaches,  that  point  whence 
genius  starts.  Genius  is  often  entirely  right, 
and  is  never 'wholly  wrong;  talent  is  never 
wholly  right.  Genius  avails  itself  of  all  the 
capabilities  of  talent,  appropriates  to  itself  what 


GENIUS  AND   TALENT.  19 

suits  and  helps  it.  Talent  can  appropriate  to 
itself  nothing  ;  for  it  has  not  the  inward  heat 
that  can  fuse  all  material,  and  assimilate  all 
food,  to  convert  it  into  blood  ;  this  only  genius 
can  do.  Goethe  was  a  man  of  genius  and,  at 
the  same  time,  of  immense  and  varied  talents  ; 
and  no  contemporary  profited  so  much  as  ne 
did  by  all  the  knowledges  and  discoveries  and 
accumulations  made  by  others.  For  full  suc- 
cess the  two,  genius  and  talent,  should  co-exist 
in  one  mind  in  balanced  proportions,  as  they 
did  in  Goethe's,  so  that  they  can  play  smoothly 
together  in  effective  combination.  In  Walking 
Stewart,  says  De  Quincey,  genius  was  out  of 
all  proportion  to  talent,  and  thus  wanted  an 
organ  for  manifesting  itself. 

The  work  of  the  world,  even  the  higher 
ranges,  being  done  by  talent,  talent,  backed 
by  industry,  is  sure  to  achieve  outward  suc- 
cess. Commonplace  is  the  smooth  road  on 
which  are  borne  the  freights  that  supply  the 
daily  needs  of  life.  Genius,  to  be  sure,  as 
the  originator  of  all  appliances  and  aids  and 
motions  and  improvements,  is  the  parent  of 
what  is  to-day  common,  of  all  that  talent  has 
turned  to  practical  account ;  but  genius,  when 
it  first  exhibits  itself,  is  as  alarming  and  hate- 


2O  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

ful  to  talent  and  routine  as  the  first  locomo- 
tives were  to  the  drivers  and  horses  of  the 
mail-coach.  Even  on  the  highest  plane  of 
literature,  the  poetical,  talent  wins  laurels  more 
readily,  and  at  first  more  abundantly,  than 
genius.  Scott  and  Moore  were,  by  their  con- 
temporaries, much  more  valued  as  poets  than 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge.  Scott  and  Moore 
were  men  of  genius,  but  of  far  less  genial  in- 
sight than  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  and 
with  more  literary  talent.  Hence  they  were 
accessible  to  the  many,  and  were  by  the  semi- 
critics,  men  of  mere  talent,  like  Jeffrey  and 
Gifford,  absolutely  as  well  as  relatively  over- 
rated. Their  genius  gives  liveliness  to  the 
commonplaces  of  feeling  and  adventure,  a 
sheen  to  surfaces  that  were  otherwise  dull  ; 
but  their  pages  lack  the  sparkle  that  issues 
out  of  recesses  suddenly  illuminated  by  im- 
aginative collisions,  a  subtle,  joyful  blaze  flash- 
ing up  from  new  marriages  between  thought 
and  sentiment,  —  marriages  that  can  only  be 
consecrated  by  the  high  priests  of  thought, 
and  which  stand  forever  inviolate,  and  for- 
ever productive,  in  the  best  verse  of  Keats  and 
Shelley. 

Genius  involves  a  more  than  usual  suscepti- 


GENIUS  AND   TALENT.  21 

bility  to  divine  promptings,  a  delicacy  in  spirit- 
ual auscultation,  a  quick  obedience  to  the 
invisible  helmsman ;  and  these  high  superiori- 
ties imply  fineness  and  fullness  of  organization. 
The  man  of  genius  is  subject,  says  Joubert, 
to  "  transport,  or  rather  rapture,  of  mind." 
In  this  exalted  state  he  has  glimpses  of  truths, 
beauties,  principles,  laws,  that  are  new  revela- 
tions, and  bring  additions  to  human  power. 
Goethe  might  have  been  thinking  of  Kepler, 
when  he  said,  "  Genius  is  that  power  of  man 
which  by  thought  and  action  gives  laws  and 
rules ; "  and  Coleridge  of  Milton  when  he 
wrote,  "  The  ultimate  end  of  genius  is  ideal ; " 
and  Hegel  may  have  had  Michael  Angelo  in 
his  mind  when,  in  one  of  his  chapters  on  the 
plastic  arts,  he  affirms  that  "  talent  cannot  do 
its  part  fully  without  the  animation  (Besee- 
lung),  the  besouling,  of  genius."  Schiller  con- 
cludes an  apostrophe  to  Columbus  with  these 
lines  :  — 

"  Trust  to  the  guiding  GOD,  follow  the  silent  sea : 

Were  not  yet  there  the  shore,  'twould  now  rise  from  the 

wave ; 

For  nature  is  to  genius  linked  eternally, 
And  ever  will  perform  the  promise  genius  gave." 


IV. 

ARISTOCRACY. 

ASPIRATION  is  a  universal  instinct.  Vines 
ever  strive  to  lay  hold  of  what  will  help  them 
to  climb.  Forest  oaks  vie  with  each  other 
which  shall  ascend  highest  into  the  light  and 
air.  The  mineral  aspires  toward  the  vegetable, 
the  vegetable  toward  the  animal  kingdom.  From 
zoophyte  to  man  each  type  is,  at  its  best,  a 
"  mute  prophecy  "  of  the  one  above  it.  Up- 
ward, upward,  is  an  innate  impulse  of  whatever 
lives.  All  being  struggles  to  ascend,  thereby 
to  better  itself,  for  every  mounted  degree  is  a 
gain  of  freedom,  and  freedom,  the  highest  aim 
of  life,  is  the  gauge  of  advancement.  The  tree 
is  freer  than  the  rock,  and  the  bird  that  builds 
in  its  boughs  is  freer  than  the  tree,  and  man  is 
freer  than  any  other  animal,  and  his  freedom 
is  in  precise  proportion  to  the  degree  that  the 
animal  in  him  is  subordinated  to  the  human  ; 
and  among  individual  men,  as  among  nations, 
elevation,  relative  and  absolute,  is  in  the  ratio 


ARISTOCRACY.  23 

of  freedom,  —  the  freest  man  approximating, 
while  yet  on  the  earth  to  the  emancipated  con- 
dition of  the  angels. 

In  the  political  and  the  social  spheres  the 
mounting  instinct  is  ever  active,  and  more  dif- 
fused and  lively  now  than  in  any  past  genera- 
tion is  this  activity,  because,  since  our  inde- 
pendence and  the  French  Revolution,  there  is 
in  Christendom  more  freedom  of  movement  than 
at  any  previous  stage  of  history.  La  carrtire 
ouverte  aux  talents  is  not  a  windy  boast  ;  it  is  a 
transforming,  vivifying  reality,  whereby  France, 
as  a  state,  has  been  for  thirty  years  much  more 
of  an  aristocracy  than  ever  before ;  that  is,  in 
her  political  administration  she  has  had  more 
of  her  stronger  men  than  she  had  under  the 
kings  and  nobles  who  for  centuries  were  her 
sole  governors.  Hereditary  governors,  one  or 
many,  are  pseudo-aristocrats.  Nature  says  to 
man  :  Choose  ye  for  rulers  the  best  I  furnish, 
but  do  not  dare  encroach  on  my  large  function 
by  aiming  to  confine  the  virtues  and  faculties 
of  rulership  to  a  few  families.  This  is,  with 
man's  shallow  devices,  to  try  to  overrule  the 
deep  laws  of  nature.  Disastrous  are  all  these 
attempts  ;  for  not  only  does  Nature  in  her 
breadth  and  justice,  discountenance  such  mo- 


24  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

nopoly,  but  in  maturing  her  best  specimens 
she  exhausts  the  particular  stock,  so  that  the 
descendants  of  a  great  man  are  mostly  like  the 
parings  and  fragments  of  a  feast,  the  potency  of 
nature  culminating  in  the  one  glorious  product, 
the  juices  of  the  stock  whence  she  drew  it 
being  by  so  deep  a  draught  exhausted.  Hence 
it  is  that  the  English  "  nobility  "  has  been  more 
of  an  aristocracy  than  the  "  noblesse  "  of  France 
or  that  of  other  continental  nations.  It  has  not 
been  so  counter  to  nature ;  it  has  not  been  a 
caste ;  it  has  sucked  at  the  breast  of  the  mighty 
multitude.  Less  pure  in  blood  heraldically,  its 
blood  is  richer,  more  prolific,  essentially  more 
*  aristocratic.  Take  from  England  her  Wolseys, 
and  Burleighs,  and  Bacons,  and  Cromwells,  and 
Somersets,  and  Clives,  and  Nelsons,  and  Pitts, 
and  Foxes,  and  Cannings,  and  Peels,  all  ple- 
beians, and  you  unman  her  history.  Had  not 
the  blood  of  her  hereditary  rulers  been  thus 
refreshed  and  invigorated,  her  De  Veres,  and 
Tudors,  and  Percys,  and  Nevilles,  and  Howards 
would  not  have  been  so  powerful  and  so 
famous.  It  is  the  virtue  of  the  English  polity, 
or  of  the  English  character,  that  under  mon- 
archic and  oligarchic  forms,  high  and  highest 
places  are  kept  open  to  the  men  fittest  for 


ARISTOCRACY.  2$ 

regency,  nature's  aristocrats,  drawn  often  from 
the  lower  strata  of  the  social  pile. 

For  its  prosperous  administration  and  endur- 
ance a  republic  has  especial  need  of  nature's 
aristocrats,  of  the  best  men  engendered  in  its 
bosom.  For  a  republic  stands  and  thrives  on 
self-government,  and  self-government  can  only 
draw  its  breath  of  life  from  character.  Among 
the  citizens  of  a  large  modern  republic,  if  it  is 
to  last,  there  must  be  prevalent  that  union  of 
good  intentions  with  intelligence  which  results 
in  common  sense  ;  and  common  sense  demands 
of  the  members  of  a  republic  or  democracy 
that  in  choosing  administrators,  they  know 
who  are  the  best  citizens,  and  have  the  will  to 
take  them.  Thus  a  republic,  for  its  welfare, 
should  be  able  not  only  to  breed  capable, 
honest  men,  nature's  aristocrats,  but,  having 
bred  them,  be  so  alive  to  noble  interests  as  to 
put  them  into  its  high  places.  In  a  word,  a 
republic,  to  thrive,  should  be  a  democratic 
aristocracy,  which  is  the  same  as  to  say  it 
should  be  ruled  by  its  best  heads.  Elections 
should  be  wise  selections.  A  man  without 
faith  in  humanity,  or  one  with  vision  bounded 
to  self-seeking  goals,  or  one  constitutionally 
despondent,  might  readily  despair  of  our  re- 


26  BRIEF  ESSA  YS. 

public  on  reviewing  the  men  who,  in  the  past 
decade  or  two,  have  made  and  administered 
laws  at  Washington.  For  a  score  of  years  we 
have  been  going  from  bad  to  worse  ;  and  unless 
we  have  reached  the  worst,  unless  by  an  inward 
motion  (part  instinctive,  part  conscious)  we 
soon  swing  ourselves  up  out  of  the  rapacious 
rankness,  the  mercenary  filth,  which  from  stain- 
ing our  garments  is  beginning  to  infect  our 
pores  with  its  poison  ;  unless  we  delegate  our 
vast  sovereign  power  to  better  men,  to  larger 
men,  to  freer  men,  that  is,  to  men  less  the 
slaves  of  self-seeking,  —  unless,  in  short,  we 
soon  reverse  our  movement  and  ascend  vigor- 
ously into  a  lighter,  purer  air,  the  tremors  of 
the  despondent  and  the  faithless  will  shape 
themselves  into  the  fears  of  the  thoughtful  and 
the  hopeful,  and  these  will  have  to  look  deeper 
than  political  forms  and  principles  for  the  means 
of  keeping  the  higher  interests  of  a  great  people 
from  being  sacrificed  to  the  lower,  and  of 
counteracting  the  demoralizing  influence  of 
narrow  egotisms  and  a  general  relaxing  mate- 
rialism. 

History  teaches  that  artificial,  nominal  aris- 
tocracies run  to  despotism  or  uphold  it ;  and 
that  whenever  a  state  has  thriven,  under  what- 


ARISTOCRACY.  2? 

ever  form,  monarchical,  oligarchical,  or  repub- 
lican, it  has  thriven  through  the  agency  of 
genuine  aristocracy,  that  is,,  through  having  its 
best  men  at  the  political  helm. 

In  the  social  sphere  aspiration  is  still  more 
lively  and  pertinacious.  Here  refinement  fur- 
nishes the  wings  for  ascent.  In  the  long  run 
those  individuals  and  breeds  most  open  to 
impressions  of  the  beautiful,  and*  thence  most 
capable  of  culture,  form  the  nucleus  and  are 
the  stamina  of  social  superiorities.  From  this 
class  (when  social  conditions  have  some  free- 
dom of  play)  accretions  are  ever  a-making  to 
supply  the  losses  incurred  by  forfeiture  of  in- 
herited social  position,  —  forfeiture  through  lack 
of  sensibilities  to  value  and  retain  a  polish, 
through  lack  of  manly  bottom  to  maintain  a 
gentlemanly  conduct  and  carriage,  of  delicacy 
to  appreciate  beauties  of  bearing,  subtleties  of 
demeanor.  As  in  the  political,  so  in  the  social 
sphere,  there  ,are  assumptions,  pretensions, 
audacious  usurpations,  and  especially  there  are 
the  oligarchic  impudences  of  fashion  to  mar  and 
weaken  ;  but  what  is  real  and  pure,  what  is 
truly  aristocratic,  what  is  the  best  socially,  is 
a  projection  beyond  the  limited  self  into  a  sphere 
of  aesthetic  association.  "  Good  society,"  if  it 


28  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

be  not  an  arrogated  name,  not  vulgarized  by 
ostentatious  ambitions,  but  if  it  be  essentially 
good,  is,  like  art,  an  issue  out  of  the  finer 
sensibilities.  It  is  the  flowering  of  the  social 
tree,  not  a  mere  fragile  ornament  on  the  top, 
and  gracefully  embodies  the  essence  of  that 
which  it  surmounts,  carrying  in  its  folds  the 
seed  for  reproduction. 

In  an  advanced  civilization  the  desire  for 
social  preferment  vibrates  through  the  whole 
frame  of  a  people.  The  late  Dr.  Bowditch,  the 
eminent  mathematician,  used  to  tell  a  story  of 
a  serving-maid  who  related  how  her  engage- 
ment had  been  broken  off  through  objections 
made  by  the  friends  of  her  lover  to  the  position 
of  herself  and  her  family.  "  Why,  Lucy,"  said 
the  doctor,  "  I  did  not  know  that  you  had  an 
aristocracy  in  your  class."  "  Aristocracy ! " 
rejoined  Lucy,'  "  we  have  more  down  there 
than  you  have  up  here."  The  masses,  it  has 
been  said,  have  the  sense  of  the  ideal.  Had 
they  it  not,  there  would  be  no  great  poets,  for 
these  are  a  subtle  distillation  out  of  the  juices 
that  give  life  and  character  to  the  mind  of  a 
people.  The  aristocracy  "  up  here  "  owes  much 
of  its  quality  to  the  quality  of  the  aristocracy 
"  down  there." 


V. 

ORGANIZATION. 

THE  ecclesiastical  and  military  institutions 
of  the  Middle  Ages  grew  out  of  the  latent 
capacities  of  European  manhood.  They  were 
protective  shells  wrought  out  of  man's  instincts 
for  the  safety  of  his  body  and  of  his  soul. 
Clumsily  were  they  wrought :  so  was  astrol- 
ogy ;  but  had  there  been  no  star-ward  need 
that  first  vented  itself  in  creating  astrology, 
the  grandeurs  and  uses  of  astronomy  would 
to  us  have  never  been  revealed.  The  military 
apparatus  enabled  civil  and  industrial  organ- 
ization to  form  and  strengthen.  The  Church 
did  similarly  for  the  mind,  giving  to  thought  a 
channel,  and  thus  saving  it,  in  dark  ignorant 
times,  from  running  loose  on  wide  surfaces, 
where  it  could  have  neither  depth  nor  current, 
and  would  have  tended  to  wayward  expansion, 
and  thence  to  wasting  evaporation.  These 
institutions  denoted  in  the  European  popula- 
tion power  of  development  and  self-protection. 
Among  the  inhabitants  of  tropical  Asia  and 


30  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

Africa  are  no  such  beginnings  :  these  feel  lit- 
tle inward  motion  towards,  and  have  not  ca- 
pacities for,  graduated  outward  arrangement. 
They  never  shape  themselves  into  organic 
wholes  ;  they  are  little  more  than  aggrega- 
tions of  shiftless  individualities  ;  and  hence 
they  do  not  emerge  into  civilization.  The 
need  of,  and  capacity  for,  organization  are  the 
mark  of  mental  breadth  and  resources. 

To  secure  enjoyment  and  growth,  the  mind, 
with  help  of  its  executive  constituent,  intel- 
lect, builds  for  its  behoof  artificial  structures, 
to  shelter  and  further  its  activities.  Being 
artificial,  man-made,  these  structures  are  tem- 
porary. Even  the  natural  body,  which  is  God- 
made  for  the  individualization  of  soul,  is  tem- 
porary, quickly  mortal.  Organizations,  devised 
by  human  intellect,  are  become  obstructions, 
usurpations,  when  they  cease  to  be  auxiliary 
to  the  strength  and  play  of  the  higher  mental 
powers,  for  whose  service  they  first  arose.  In 
man-made  organizations  there  is  an  inherent 
tendency  to  materiality,  to  grossness  ;  and  a 
sign  it  is  that  they  have  become  material  and 
gross,  when  they  are  no  longer  subordinated 
to  the  spiritual,  but  would  govern  and  bound 
it,  when  they  have  become  end  instead  of 


ORGANIZA  TION.  3 1 

means,  masters  instead  of  servants.  Such  the 
ecclesiastical  institutions  of  Europe  had  be- 
come in  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth,  and  fif- 
teenth centuries.  Men  were  imprisoned  in 
the  Church.  The  mind,  the  light  of  manhood, 
the  creative  core,  the  source  of  life  and  worth, 
the  mind  was  weakened,  maimed,  blindfolded, 
was  thwarted  and  smitten  by  the  very  insti- 
tution designed  to  enlarge  and  second  it ;  as 
though  a  citadel  should  come  to  be  controlled 
by  its  own  outworks,  as  though  a  parent  were 
bound  and  scourged  by  his  own  children.  But 
the  same  inward  force  that  first  promoted  the 
organization  stirred  to  rend  it,  now  that  it 
had  grown  worldly  and  tyrannical.  Many  were 
the  voices  raised  in  protest,  and  many  were 
the  martyrs  of  freedom  ;  some  of  them  like 
Wickliffe  and  Huss  and  Savonarola,  so  full  of 
light  that  they  still  throw  light  on  our  path. 
At  last  from  the  heart  of  Germany  came  a 
voice  stronger  and  clearer  than  any  yet  heard, 
the  voice  of  Luther.  This  giant  rent  in  twain 
the  huge  fabric  of  Roman  ecclesiastical  dom- 
ination. How  broad  was  the  rent,  how  ir- 
reconcilably hostile  were  the  two  camps  into 
which  his  manly  might  had  split  Christen- 
dom, Luther  himself  was  hardly  aware.  More 


32  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

grandly  and  far  more  deeply  than  he  knew, 
Luther  was  the  assertor  and  spokesman  of 
mental  independence.  Thenceforward  one-half, 
and  the  stronger  half  of  the  Christian  world, 
was  open  to  free  organization. 

The  largest,  the  most  prolific  right  that  man 
has  ever  achieved  is  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment. In  the  beginning  it  was  a  protest  of 
the  free  against  the  despotic,  of  the  spiritual 
against  the  mechanical  and  material ;  and  it 
insures  the  final  triumph  of  the  free  and  spir- 
itual in  all  provinces  of  human  being  and 
endeavor.  For  in  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment is  involved  the  power  to  exercise  it,  and 
the  successful  exercise  implies  capacity  for, 
nay,  possession  of,  social  and  political  organi- 
zation ;  and  the  higher  this  is  the  more  com- 
plicated will  it  be.  Note  the  simplicity  and 
one-sidedness  of  life  under  despotic  govern- 
ments in  all  ages  and  continents,  and  then 
the  diversity  and  the  many-sidedness  of  Amer- 
ican republican  life.  A  distinctive  feature  of 
our  country  is  the  number  of  associations, 
combinations,  institutions,  which,  originating 
in  the  wants,  desires,  aspirations  of  free  self- 
governing  citizens,  grow  up  spontaneously,  and 
maintain  themselves  within,  but  independent 


ORGANIZATION; 


33 


of,  the  State,  so  many  imperia  in  Imperio. 
Hardly  any  day's  newspaper  but  has  a  report 
of  the  proceedings  of  some  Temperance,  Odd 
Fellows,  Woman's  Rights,  Free  Trade,  Meth- 
odist, Baptist,  or  other  Sectarian  meeting, 
Benevolent,  Artistic,  or  Scientific  society,  — 
all  private  organizations,  started  for  the  pur- 
pose of  cultivating  and  propagating,  each  one 
certain  special  principles  and  practices,  each 
one  nourishing  some  tissue  of  our  manifold 
life,  and  all  therefore  contributing  more  or  less 
to  the  general  weal.  These  many  and  diverse 
voluntary  organizations  contain  the  essence 
of  political  self-direction  :  they  are  the  healthy 
offspring  of  free  spirit  and  free  life :  they  tem- 
per the  hardening  forms  of  legislative  rule : 
they  lie  beneath  constitutions,  and  upheave 
them  with  their  spiritual  force.  Besides  these 
there  are  countless  industrial  combinations  for 
furthering  especial  objects  of  capital  or  labor. 
All,  whatever  their  aim  or  amplitude,  are  so 
many  nests  of  self-government,  forestalling 
much  of  the  work  of  public  political  authority, 
and  are  at  once  the  evidence  of,  and  a  school 
for,  self-direction  and  practical  self-culture,  a 
result  and  a  support  of  manly  life  and  polit- 
ical freedom. 

3 


34 


BRIEF  ESSAYS. 


The  further  you  go  east  the  fewer  there  are 
of  these  voluntary  public-spirited  associations. 
England,  next  to  ourselves,  has  the  most  of 
them.  In  France,  under  the  shallow  despot, 
Louis  Napoleon,  they  were  not  allowed  to  be, 
while  they  are  springing  up  in  Italy  and  Spain 
and  Germany,  since  these  nations  have  begun 
their  regeneration. 


VI. 

WORK. 

WE  live  by  work  ;  we  prosper  by  work  ;  we 
rise  by  work.  Men  take  rank  according  to  the 
work  they  do.  Luther  and  Shakespeare  are 
ruling  sovereigns  among  men  by  virtue  of  the 
vastness  and  excellence  of  their  work.  All 
history,  all  civilization,  is  the  product  of  work. 
We  advance  by  its  inventions,  we  thrive  on  its 
accumulations.  Intellect  is  the  parent  of  work  ; 
the  more  method  there  is  in  work,  the  more  ef- 
fective it  is.  The  simplest  garden  is  laid  out 
in  beds  ;  if  you  ^sow  squash,  and  peas,  and 
beets,  and  celery,  and  Brussels  sprouts,  all  to- 
gether, you  will  have  a  horticultural  chaos  and 
no  vegetables.  Foresight,  intelligence  in  work, 
are  the  guage  of  progress.  Mankind  rests  on 
work,  moves  on  work ;  stop  work,  and  New 
York,  London,  Berlin,  collapse.  London,  New 
York,  Berlin,  are  great  workshops. 

Walk  through  the  thoroughfares  of  these 
workshops,  to  learn  what  wealth  they  turn  out 
daily,  then  pass  into  other  quarters,  into  dark, 


36  BRIEF  ESSA  VS. 

damp,  crowded  cellars,  and  hungry  attics,  and 
reeking  tenement-houses,  to  learn  how  squalor 
and  poverty  cling  to  the  sides  of  wealth  and 
luxury,  like  a  "  mildewed  ear  blasting  its  whole- 
some brother."  A  busy  city  may  be  likened  to 
a  huge  monster,  its  upper  members  glittering 
in  gold  and  diamonds,  while  its  lower  are  bound 
with  rags  oozing  with  festered  sores.  And  is 
not  he  a  social  monster,  the  single  individual 
who,  with  a  million  in  his  pocket,  walks  through 
a  crowd  of  the  half-clad  and  the  half-fed  ?  or 
are  not  they  the  monsters,  beings  unnatural,  by 
the  side  of  comfortable  opulence,  prodigies  in 
the  face  of  healthy  Nature  ? 

Can  this  yawning  chasm  be  filled  ?  The 
pale,  stooping  woman  in  that  bare,  chill  gar- 
ret, stitching  from  daybreak  till  midnight  to 
earn  poor  clothes  and  poorer  meals,  can  she  be 
brought  near  to  that  other  woman  in  jewels  and 
laces,  who  in  cushioned  coach  is  rolling  to  the 
fashionable  ball,  striving  to  turn  night  into  day 
in  search  of  amusement  ?  They  are  both  of 
American  birth,  possibly  cousins,  and  both  are 
immortal  souls.  Both,  in  different  forms,  are 
victims  of  conditions  whose  cold,  pitiless  arbi- 
trariness may,  within  a  decade,  banish  the 
daughter  of  the  bejewelled  one  to  the  garret 


WORK.  37 

of  the  overworked  and  underfed.  What  polit- 
ical economist,  with  his  formulas  and  super- 
ficial expedients,  dares  confront  the  vast  lower- 
ing problem  of  capital  and  labor  ?  Political 
economy  deals  with  producers  and  consumers, 
not  with  throbbing  men.  Until  you  deal  with 
men  primarily  as  men,  you  will  solve  no  such 
problems. 

Individual  men,  and  aggregates  of  men  in 
communities  and  nations,  are  set  in  motion  by, 
are  agitated  by,  nay,  have  their  very  being  in, 
feeling.  Feeling  propels  the  intellect,  which  is 
but  its  tool ;  feeling  is  the  father  of  all  wants, 
originates  all  work.  The  needs  of  conjoined 
beings,  co-working  for  mutual  help,  these  create 
society,  gradually  promoting  it,  according  to  the 
power  and  purity  of  feeling,  from  savagery 
through  barbarism  up  to  the  highest  levels  yet 
attained  in  the  more  advanced  communities 
of  the  most  civilized  nations.  In  the  best 
of  these,  even  in  foremost  personages,  there 
is  nevertheless  but  partial  play  given  to  the 
feelings.  Hence  discontents,  restlessness,  vice, 
unhappiness,  despondency  ;  and  in  those  out- 
wardly and  personally  less  favored,  misery,  de- 
spair, crime.  Free  play,  not  to  say  full  play,  to 
the  deep,  infinitely  varied,  ceaseless  motions  of 


38  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

the  feelings,  those  regents  of  life,  those  con- 
stituents of  the  substance  of  human  being,  free 
play  to  these  demands  a  far  closer  mental  asso- 
ciation among  men  than  has  yet  taken  place. 
As  human  relations  now  are,  each  one  does, 
comparatively  with  what  he  might  do,  little  for 
himself,  because  he  does  and  can  do  so  little  for 
others  ;  it  is  an  everlasting  principle  that  the 
more  we  do  for  others  the  more  we  do  for  our- 
selves. 

Men  in  all  positions  stand  in  too  hostile  at- 
titudes one  towards  another.  Every  man  is 
trying  to  get  the  better  of  somebody.  There  is 
far  too  much  counter-working  and  not  enough 
co-working.  The  stronger  and  shrewder  make 
the  many  work  for  the  few  —  the  few  growing 
rich,  the  many  keeping  poor.  The  problem  of 
wages,  the  relations  between  buyer  and  seller, 
between  producer  and  consumer,  the  reciprocal 
rights  of  capitalist  and  laborer,  beneath  all 
these  problems,  within  them,  above  them,  lie  the 
rights  of  man,  not  rights  political,  but  those 
rights  which  grow  out  of,  inhere  in,  his  organic 
nature.  Now  the  faculties,  powers,  impulses, 
aspirations  which,  because  they  involve  these 
rights,  constitute  the  human  being,  these  carry 
within  them  laws  implanted  there  to  solve  all 


WORK.  39 

such  problems,  —  laws,  obscure  it  may  be,  dif- 
ficult to  discover,  as  laws  of  large  comprehen- 
siveness are  apt  to  be.  Electricity  played  round 
and  through  the  air  and  earth  in  the  days  of 
Socrates  and  Cicero  ;  and  how  many  centuries 
had  mankind  to  wait  for  the  Franklin  and  the 
Morse  to  seize  its  law,  and  turn  it  to  great 
uses  ?  A  deep  law,  covering  a  wide  field  of 
being  or  action,  is  ever  freighted  with  impor- 
tant and  with  beneficent  solutions. 

Of  deep,  fruitful,  social  laws,  Fourier  pro- 
fesses to  be  the  discoverer.  I  am  not  aware 
that  any  other  social  reformer  and  thinker  puts 
forward  a  like  pretension.  At  the  same  time 
without  some  such  discovery  —  discovery  of 
synthetic,  far-stretching  law  —  no  solution  of 
social  and  industrial  problems  can  be  reached. 
Is  Fourier  a  discoverer?  In  recent  discus- 
sions the  name  of  Fourier  occasionally  comes 
up  ;  in  most  cases  to  be  briefly  dismissed  as 
that  of  a  communist,  free  lovist,  at  best  an  im- 
practical dreamer.  Fourier  is  nothing  of  all 
this,  be  he  a  genuine  discoverer  or  not.  Of 
a  thoughtful  and  conscientious  nature,  by  the 
frauds  he  witnessed,  and  was  obliged  to  be  a 
party  to,  in  trade,  he  was,  as  a  young  man, 
driven  to  meditate  on  the  means  of  introducing 
lustice  into  the  dealings  among  men  ;  and  the 


4O  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

result,  after  years  of  observation  and  study, 
was,  that  by  higher  methods  work  may  be  made 
more  thorough,  more  productive,  and,  instead 
of  being  in  most  cases  irksome,  and  in  many 
repulsive,  be  attractive  and  enjoyable. 

See  that  shoemaker,  bent  over  his  last  all 
day,  and  that  tailor,  plying  the  needle  eight  or 
ten  hours  daily,  each  bound  to  his  one  task 
from  week  to  week,  from  year  to  year,  through 
a  long  work-weary  life  ?  Such  in  its  monotony 
and  irksomeness,  is  the  life  of  the  tens  of  mil- 
lions of  workers.  Those  two  stout  intelligent 
young  men  are  capable  of  several  kinds  of  work, 
and  how  willingly  would  each  shift  his  hands, 
some  hours  every  day,  from  the  one  endless 
routine  to  other  production.  There  is  not  a 
sound  man  but  is  capable  of  more  than  one 
kind  of  work,  many  men  are  capable  of  several 
kinds,  and  some  of  many  kinds.  Figure  to 
yourself  a  thousand  people  living  in  conven- 
ient proximity  —  not  the  close  and  foul  prox- 
imity of  the  tenement-house  —  so  ordering  a 
dozen  different  forms  of  work  that  they  could 
in  parties  of  ten  or  twenty  alternate  every  two 
or  three  hours,  each  choosing  departments 
for  which  he  has  aptitude  or  liking.  Here, 
besides  the  enlivening  changes,  they  have 
the  exhilaration  of  congenial  companionship. 


WORK.  41 

Add  to  this  that  in  most  kinds  of  work,  men, 
women,  and  children  are  united  in  cheerful 
rivalry,  and  does  not  the  attractiveness  and 
joyousness  of  such  work  shine  upon  you  ?  It 
is  only  higher  organization,  profounder  method 
applied  to  work,  whereby  to  satisfy,  as  they 
never  have  been  satisfied,  the  wants  of  the 
human  being.  In  this  there  is  nothing  de- 
structive, nothing  subversive.  It  is  a  change 
similar  to  that  which  a  man  makes  when  he 
sells  his  house,  puts  the  proceeds  into  a  joint- 
stock  company,  and  betakes  him  to  a  board- 
ing-house,— similar,  but  far  more  serviceable. 
It  will  be  an  expansion,  a  liberation  of  the 
worker,  a  change  which  will  be  justified,  nay, 
it  is  demanded,  by  the  whole  diversified  capa- 
bility of  man  ;  is  invigorating  to  his  intellect 
as  it  will  be  purifying  to  his  heart. 

Let  the  thoughtful,  sympathetic  men,  whose 
minds  are  now  busy  with  the  momentous  ques- 
tions of  poverty  and  crime,  of  wages  and  com- 
petition, of  cooperation  and  labor,  let  them 
give  an  intelligent  and  a  dispassionate  exam- 
ination to  the  pretensions  of  Fourier  as  a  dis- 
coverer of  social  and  industrial  laws.  Latent 
in  humanity  there  are  such  laws  ;  bring  them 
to  light,  and  the  way  is  opened  to  great  solu- 
tions. 


VII. 

THE   SOCIAL    PALACE   AT   GUISE. 

AT  Guise,  a  small  town  in  the  northeastern 
part  of  France,  on  the  Oise,  half-way  between 
Paris  and  Brussels,  has  arisen  an  industrial 
and  social  phenomenon,  in  the  shape  of  a 
human  hive  of  busy,  well-housed,  well-fed  men, 
women,  and  children,  literally  a  Social  Palace. 
Above  the  destitutions  and  squalors  and  star- 
vations of  the  laboring  masses  of  Christendom, 
this  pile  rears  itself  like  an  illuminated  dome 
lighting  up  the  dim  domains  of  an  unhealthy 
dream-land.  But  the  buildings  and  business 
of  this  pile  are  the  opposite  of  dream-like  ; 
they  are  the  logical  outcome  of  generations  of 
healthy  aspiring  effort,  the  legitimate  offspring 
of  centuries  of  deep  gestation.  They  stand 
there  now  a  great  new  fact,  smiling  with  a 
noble  pride,  glistening  with  hope  to  the  civil- 
ized world.  But  what  is  the  Social  Palace  at 
Guise  ? 

In  the  first  quarter  of  the  present  century, 
into  the  mind  of  a  French  boy,  while  seated 


THE  SOCIAL  PALACE  AT  GUISE.  43 

on  the  benches  of  a  crowded,  misused  school, 
came  the  wish  to  better  its  conditions.  Soon 
this  thoughtful  sympathy  was  transferred  from 
his  school-fellows  to  mechanical  laborers  ;  and 
between  the  ages  of  eleven  and  twelve  he  set 
himself  earnestly  to  work  in  his  father's  iron 
work-shop,  that  he  might  get  command  of  a 
wide  field  for  usefulness.  As  he  grew  towards 
manhood  the  injustices,  oppressions,  hardships, 
which  press  upon  the  toiling  masses  wrought 
on  him  more  deeply,  and  set  him  to  devising 
plans  for  their  remedy.  Intelligent,  zealous, 
punctual,  young  Godin  was  early  able  to  start 
for  himself,  and  to  prosper.  The  capital  ac- 
quired by  his  foresight  and  industry  he  used 
to  fulfill  the  broad,  generous  desires  of  his 
opening  years  ;  from  his  own  high,  pecuniary 
vantage-ground  he  sought  to  bring  more  jus- 
tice into  the  relations  between  labor  and  capi- 
tal, and  bringing  more  justice,  to  bring  greater 
profit  to  both.  His  is  one  of  those  clear,  sym- 
pathetic natures  that  will  not  let  the  man 
forget  the  great  dreams  of  the  youth. 

Studying  in  search  of  the  best  method  to 
compass  his  noble  wish  ;  examining  the  vari- 
ous plans  projected  for  associating  on  deeper 
principles  the  workman  and  his  employer, 


44  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

M.  Godin  accepted  the  deductions  of  Fou- 
rier's great  synthetic  mind.  His  own  mind  is 
of  the  same  "  large  composition  "  as  Fourier's 
—  one  of  those  rare  organizations  which  com- 
bine high,  strong,  forecasting  intellect  with 
the  bountiful  sensibilities  which,  besides  mak- 
ing the  intellect  penetrative,  send  the  man  out 
of  himself  to  accomplish  his  dearest  wishes. 

The  sound  principle,  that  workmen  should 
receive  a  justly  proportioned  share  in  the  net 
produce  of  their  work,  this  did  not  satisfy  M. 
Godin.  His  plan  embraced,  in  addition,  the 
intellectual  and  social  improvement  of  them 
and  theirs  through  a  unitary  building.  So 
soon  as  he  had  gathered  capital  enough  he  col- 
lected all  his  workmen  and  their  families  under 
one  roof,  or  rather,  under  three  roofs,  a  cen- 
tral building  and  two  large  wings,  all  connected 
together,  each  one  of  the  three  four  stories 
high,  with  a  court  in  the  centre  of  each,  and 
galleries  running  round  the  interior  of  the 
court.  Near  to  these  are  separate  buildings 
for  nurseries,  school-rooms,  restaurant,  mar- 
kets, bakery,  etc.  ;  and  further  off  are  the 
various  structures  for  the  manufacture  of 
stoves,  this  being  the  business  of  M.  Godin. 

Economy,  convenience,    cleanliness,  health- 


THE  SOCIAL  PALACE  AT  GUISE.  45 

fulness,  cheerfulness,  these  are  the  primary 
gains  of  the  unitary  building.  In  the  bulky 
volume  of  M.  Godin,  published  in  1871,  en- 
titled "Solutions  Sociales,"  wherein  he  ex- 
pounds his  whole  theory  and  aims  and  practice, 
the  final  chapter  is  devoted  to  the  Social  Pal- 
ace he  has  established  at  Guise.  This  chapter 
has  forty-four  sections.  Space  fails  us  here 
to  illustrate  the  many  and  various  advantages 
of  such  a  palatial  home  ;  but  from  the  titles 
of  some  of  these  sections  the  reader  can  judge 
of  their  contents  and  import :  "  Character  of 
the  Social  Abode  ;  Peculiarities  of  Architectu- 
ral Unity  ;  Facility  of  Relations  ;  Domestic 
Economy  ;  Ventilation  and  General  Salubrity  ; 
Temperature  and  Heating ;  Absence  of  In- 
sects ;  Water  and  Baths  ;  Light,  the  Symbol 
of  Progress ;  Light  in  the  Day ;  Light  at 
Night ;  Order  and  Tranquillity  ;  Personal  Se- 
curity ;  Medical  Attendance ;  Integral  Educa- 
tion ;  Nurseries ;  Schools  ;  Principles  of  Or- 
ganization ;  Order  and  Liberty." 

In  the  three  connected  buildings,  called  by 
their  wise  founder  the  Familistire,  are  lodged 
nine  hundred  people.  Out  of  their  share  of 
the  profits  from  the  manufactory,  food,  lodg- 
ing, and  clothing  are  paid  for,  all  to  be  had 


46  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

at  wholesale  prices,  and  of  good  quality.  Their 
general  interests  are  under  the  charge  of  a 
council  of  twenty-four,  twelve  of  either  sex, 
chosen  by  the  whole  body  of  adult  inmates. 
Out  of  the  common  fund  their  children,  from 
infancy  to  youth,  are  educated  as  they  can  be 
nowhere  else,  all  the  nurses  as  well  as  the 
teachers  in  the  ascending  classes,  holding 
their  places  through  their  attraction  to  those 
places. 

This  is  a  great  step  from  wages  and  the 
isolated  household ;  and  it  is  the  initiatory 
movement  to  a  higher  step,  which  will  be 
taken  when  work  shall  be  organized  under  a 
yet  deeper  and  broader  principle,  divulged  by 
Fourier  through  his  discovery  of  the  law  of 
groups  and  series.  Work  will  then  be  brought 
within  the  scope  of  the  prolific,  beneficent 
sway  of  attraction,  and  of  afifectional  sympa- 
thies. Work  is  the  regent  of  all  human  rela- 
tions ;  work  has  raised  us  from  barbarism  to 
civilization  ;  every  achievement  is  begotten, 
every  joy  enlivened,  every  liberty  won,  every 
virtue  perfected  by  work.  When  in  its  many,  its 
infinite  modifications,  work  through  thorough 
intellectual  and  affective  cooperation,  shall  have 
become  grateful,  aye,  and  delightful,  then  will 


THE  SOCIAL  PALACE  AT  GUISE.  47 

the  sunshine  of  life  tingle  in  all  the  countless 
hearts  that  now  throb  in  the  shadow  of  poverty, 
or  beat  heavily  under  the  gloom  of  vice.  In 
work  made  attractive,  there  is  salvation,  moral 
as  well  as  industrial  salvation.  Have,  therefore, 
no  fear  for  morals.  With  increased  well-being 
and  cleanliness,  with  the  independence  and  free- 
dom gained  through  steady,  willing  occupation, 
is  engendered  a  more  solid  self-respect,  a  deeper 
sense  of  personal  responsibility,  and  thence  a 
healthier  moral  tone.  A  sparkle  there  will  be 
of  mental  as  well  as  of  bodily  health  unknown 
elsewhere.  To  life  will  be  imparted  a  fresh  mo- 
mentum and  cheerfulness,  and  unprecedented 
liveliness  and  honesty.  A  thousand  people  of 
all  ages  and  both  sexes,  held  together  by  joyful 
co-work  —  and  nothing  else  could  hold  them  — 
cannot  but  be  sound,  and  the  more  and  more 
sound  according  as  greater  play  be  given  to  all 
their  faculties  of  intellect  and  feeling  through 
varied  occupation.  Put  the  same  thousand  into 
the  same  building  to  live  in  idleness,  unknit 
together  by  active  co-working,  and  they  would 
fly  asunder  in  less  than  a  year,  scattered  and 
shattered  by  discords  and  sensuality.  When 
we  see  the  effects  of  passions  seduced  and  per- 
verted, as  they  are  now  so  often  seen,  we  ex- 


48  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

claim  with  awe,  "  How  fearfully  we  are  made  !  " 
When  we  shall  see  them  all  healthily  active,  we 
shall  exclaim  with  ecstacy,  "  How  beautifully, 
how  divinely  we  are  made  ! " 

Already  in  M.  Godin's  establishment  the 
moral  tone  is  much  raised  above  what  prevails 
among  the  same  class  of  workmen  out  of  the 
Familisttre.  If  it  is  still  far  from  the  highest, 
this  is  because,  through  the  limitation  of  the 
faculties  to  one  or  two  employments,  freedom  is 
limited.  Moral  perception  grows  clearer  and 
clearer  through  more  and  more  freedom.  Free- 
dom grows  through  the  unfolding  and  culture 
of  all  the  faculties,  those  of  feeling  as  well  as 
those  of  intellect ;  and  this  full  unfolding  and 
culture  can  only  take  place  through  intimate, 
variegated  co-working  of  age,  manhood,  woman- 
hood, youth,  and  childhood. 


VIII. 

WORLDLINESS. 

THAT  the  world  should  be  full  of  worldliness 
seems  as  right  as  that  a  stream  should  be  full 
of  water,  or  a  living  body  of  blood.  So  should 
a  healthy  mind  be  full  of  religion  ;  yet,  for  a 
thousand  years  a  religious  man  meant  the  in- 
mate of  a  monastery,  and  means  so  now  where 
monkery  still  glooms.  The  first  equivalent 
your  French  dictionary  will  give  you  for  the 
noun  religieux  is  friar. 

A  worldling  is  not  a  man  filled  with  the 
deeper,  cleaner  realities,  delighting  in  what  is 
highest  and  best  in  God's  world  ;  he  is  not  a 
freeman  of  Nature's  guild,  but  of  man's  ;  and 
thence  so  laden  is  he  with  the  begilt  and  the 
temporary,  that  he  has  little  strength  for  the 
solid  and  the  eternal. 

Within  the  majestic  evolution  of  power  and 
beauty,  the  incessant  corruscation  of  God's 
world,  before  the  eyes  of  man,  —  in  the  midst 
of  this  boundless,  infinite,  untangled  interlace- 
ment of  wheeling,  illumined  circles,  there 
4 


5O  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

moves  another  world,  dependent  on,  subordi- 
nate to,  this  primal  mighty  one,  and  sometimes 
obstructive  of  it ;  this  is  man's  world,  which, 
from  a  twig,  has  grown  to  be  a  far-spreading 
forest,  so  umbrageous  at  times  that  it  is  often 
a  darkening  screen  between  man's  vision  and 
the  superior  creation  whence  its  life  is  drawn. 
From  crude  impulses,  from  few  simple  desires, 
has  come,  through  the  unfolding  of  intelligence, 
and  the  culture  of  feeling,  a  complex  over- 
growth of  wants  and  fruitions,  of  arts  and  re- 
finements, of  inventions  and  auxiliaries,  of 
discoveries  and  institutions,  which  so  busy  and 
concern,  so  flatter  and  engross  civilized  man, 
that  he,  their  creator,  has  grown  to  be  their  de- 
pendent ;  and,  limiting  his  life  to  the  round  of 
their  dwarfish  gyrations,  converting  conven- 
iences into  essentials,  luxuries  into  blessings, 
things  secondary  into  things  cardinal,  he  in 
many  cases  is  become  such  a  slave  to  circum- 
stance, so  much  a  creature  towards  his  own 
creation,  that  he  has  almost  ceased  to  feel  him- 
self an  issue  of  God.  Many  a  man,  many  an 
educated  man,  is  but  dimly  conscious  that  he  is 
the  inhabitant  of  an  upper  world.  He  knows 
of  no  uses  but  the  prosaic  ;  the  sun  is  his  lamp, 
the  summer  his  gardener.  Like  the  cloth  he 


WORLDLINESS.  51 

wears  or  the  carriage  that  carries  him,  he  is 
grown  to  be  an  artificial  instead  of  a  natural 
product.  Allegiance  to  the  divine  has  been 
forfeited  ;  he  is  the  obsequious  burgher  of  a 
sensuous,  earthly  subcreation  ;  he  is  a  world- 
ling. 

In  one  of  his  weird,  significant  tales,  Haw- 
thorne writes :  "  Wealth  is  the  golden  essence 
of  the  outward  world,  embodying  almost  every- 
thing that  exists  beyond  the  limits  of  the  soul." 
When,  therefore,  we  say  that  the  worldling  is 
always  a  mammonist,  that  gold  is  his  chief 
god,  we  draw  the  widest  circumference  that  en- 
closes his  active  being.  His  centre  has  not  the 
heat  to  project  the  radii  of  life  beyond  material 
circumscriptions.  The  worldling  does  not  live 
in  his  soul ;  he  tries  to  ignore  his  inmost  self ; 
his  habitation  is  on  the  outskirts  of  beautiful 
being.  Thence  he  has  but  slight  relations  with 
the  souls  of  other  men.  Living  in  and  on  ex- 
ternalities, the  superficial  is  the  element  he 
thrives  in  ;  but,  as  the  less  food  has  of  nutri- 
tious substance  the  larger  must  be  the  quan- 
tity taken,  he,  for  his  contentment,  needs  to  be 
^ver  busy  with  the  external.  The  internal  re- 
pels him,  profundities  confound  him  ;  tell  him 
he  is  a  spirit,  and  you  sadden  him.  He  de- 


52  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

lights  in  select  crowds,  in  showy  equipages,  in 
fashionable  dinner-parties,  in  the  glare  of  chan- 
deliers. When  not  in  "  company "  he  is  pre- 
paring for  it  and  thinking  of  it.  When  alone, 
he  has  on  his  cordial  expression  only  when  he 
is  about  to  go  out ;  the  putting  on  of  his  dress- 
coat  lights  up  his  countenance.  But  this  is 
only  the  modish  worldling,  your  drawing-room 
loafer  or  leader,  your  company -man  whose 
diplomas  are  his  invitations,  whose  rent-roll  is 
his  visiting-list.  Worldliness  were  not  worth 
a  paragraph  in  a  printed  page,  did  it  not  busy 
and  impel  brains  to  which  those  of  a  dressy 
metropolitan  gossip  were  but  as  the  fizz  of 
a  holiday  rocket  to  the  flash  of  a  minie  rifle. 
Erasmus  was  a  worldling,  and  a  higher  than 
he,  Bacon,  much  of  the  wisdom  of  whose  great 
essays  is  worldly  wisdom.  Napoleon  was  the 
chief  of  worldlings,  the  Lucifer  of  this  multi- 
tudinous heaven-banished  crew.  Herein  Louis 
Napoleon  is  very  like  his  uncle.  The  high  places 
in  the  State,  and  alas  !  in  the  Church,  are  apt  to 
be  held  by  worldlings,  these  having  a  simian  tal- 
ent for  climbing,  a  prehensile  gift,  and  sinuous- 
ness  in  seizing  and  winding  themselves  among 
the  branches  of  the  glistening  smooth-barked 
tree  that  has  its  root  deep  in  the  soil  of  matter, 


WORLDLINESS.  53 

and  bears  a  bifold  fruit  of  gold  and  power.  But 
man  can  never  get  entirely  rid  of  his  con- 
science, nor  smother  utterly  the  inner  self; 
and  so,  worldliness  has  an  instinct  of  hypocrisy, 
and  is  ever  seeking  to  wrap  itself  in  veils  and 
teguments  that  hide  its  ugliness  without  ham- 
pering its  action  ;  and  for  this  it  finds  often 
effectual  the  badges  and  tools  of  the  highest 
functions,  secretly  hugging  itself  behind  the 
gown  judicial,  the  cloth  clerical,  and  the  ros- 
trum philanthropical. 

This  falseness  of  aim,  this  exaggeration  of 
the  transient  and  the  artificial,  this  deference  to 
wealth  and  contempt  of  material  poverty,  this 
all  for  having  and  naught  for  being,  this  rest- 
less shallow  activity,  to  which  truly  belong  the 
words  Burke  untruly  applied  to  all  human  ef- 
fort, "  What  shadows  we  are,  what  shadows  we 
pursue  ! "  this  unhealthiness  of  desire,  this  futile 
turning  of  the  means  into  the  end,  all  this, 
which  is  but  a  many-sided  sign  of  the  one  hollow- 
ness,  this  protean  worldliness,  confining  itself 
to  no  class  or  condition,  taints  members  of  all, 
from  the  king  to  the  beggar,  but  dyes  with  its 
most  gaudy  stains  that  class  in  which  gold  most 
ministers  to  superfluity,  the  class  which  it  at- 
tires as  its  choice  victim,  the  class  thus  char- 


54  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

acterized  by  the  spiritual,  intellectual  F.  W. 
Robertson  :  "  If  you  wish  to  know  what  hol- 
lowness  and  heartlessness  are,  you  must  seek 
for  them  in  the  world  of  light,  elegant,  super- 
ficial fashion,  where  frivolity  has  turned  the 
heart  into  a  rock-bed  of  selfishness.  Say  what 
men  will  of  the  heartlessness  of  trade,  it  is 
nothing  compared  with  the  heartlessness  of 
fashion.  Say  what  they  will  of  the  atheism  of 
science,  it  is  nothing  to  the  atheism  of  that 
round  of  pleasure  in  which  the  heart  lives ; 
dead  while  it  lives." 


IX. 

ART. 

FROM  the  heroic  combat  at  Thermopylae  to 
the  simplest  individualities  of  doing  or  suffer- 
ing that  give  to  the  present  hour  its  animation, 
every  fact,  event,  conjunction,  has  its  life  and 
especial  significance.  To  seize  this  life,  in  any- 
thing like  its  essential  being  and  import,  the 
rays  shed  on  it  from  the  witnessing  mind  must 
be  well  fed  with  vigor  and  sympathy.  To  him 
who  can  read  them,  the  world  is  full  of  mean- 
ings, of  hints,  full  of  appeals.  Nature  is  lav- 
ish of  jets  that  issue  from  her  glowing  core, 
and  await  a  spark  from  some  human  thought 
to  flash  into  delightful  illumination.  The  mind 
that  is  to  ignite  these  jets  must  itself  be  warm 
with  the  fire  of  ideas.  We  see  with  ideas  :  he 
who  has  the  brightest  and  clearest,  sees  best 
and  farthest. 

Thus  vivid,  the  mind  builds  within  itself 
fabrics  of  thought.  Out  of  intuitions  and  of 
knowledge  acquired  it  forms  images,  and  holds 
and  carries  them  in  its  invisible  grasp.  This 


56  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

mental  power  of  interior  construction  is  called 
imagination,  and  is  the  most  intense  exertion 
of  intellect  at  its  highest  degree  of  action,  ex- 
ercised most  effectually  in  such  direction  as  the 
predominant  faculties  of  the  individual  prompt. 
To  the  mercantile  combiner,  to  the  military 
strategist,  to  the  measurer  of  stars,  imagina- 
tion, or  the  power  of  mental  construction,  is  as 
needful  as  to  the  poet.  The  astronomer  too, 
and  the  strategist  must,  in  order  to  do  their 
work,  be  able  to  carry  in  the  mind  combina- 
tions and  completed  plans.  The  far-seeing 
masterly  man  of  business,  who  brings  order 
out  of  a  chaos  of  affairs,  partakes  with  the  poet 
of  the  creative  power.  The  difference  between 
them  is,  that  the  Poet  or  Artist  always  makes 
appeal  to  the  feelings.  So  do  the  melodramat- 
ist  and  the  prosaic  novelist.  But  these  work 
superficially,  for  rapid  transitory  effects.  Not 
from  a  deep  store  of  rich  sensibilities  are  their 
materials  drawn  ;  for,  if  so,  in  their  work  would 
be  the  foundations  and  promise  of  poetry  ;  nor, 
when  their  sensibilities  are  used  by  the  imagi- 
nation in  fiction,  are  they  sublimated  by  the 
supreme,  by  what  may  be  called  the  creative 
sensibility,  that  to  the  beautiful ;  for  that  were 
the  fulfillment  of  a  poetic  promise. 


ART.  57 

Poetry,  Art  (for  Art  is  not  Art  unless  it  be 
poetical)  is  creative.  The  Artist  is  a  creator, 
or  he  is  naught ;  that  is,  the  light  thrown  from 
his  mind  upon  an  object  or  scene,  whether  real 
or  mentally  constructed,  must  win  from  that 
object  or  scene  a  new  aspect,  endue  it  with 
new  life,  enliven  it  with  new  meaning.  Poetic 
genius  vitalizes  with  its  own  spirit  what  it  takes 
in  hand,  and  it  takes  a  subject  in  hand  because 
it  can  so  re-animate  and  elevate  it.  It  is  the 
power  and  privilege  of  genius  to  be  fresh  on 
trite  themes,  original  on  old  ground.  Genuine 
Art  always  spiritualizes,  in  its  means  as  well  as 
its  end  subordinating  the  physical  to  the  men- 
tal, the  animal  to  the  psychical.  It  appeals  to 
the  feelings  in  such  a  way  as  not  superficially 
to  please  them  or  to  flatter  them,  but  in  such 
a  way  as  shall  rejoice,  and  through  that  rejoic- 
ing, purify  them.  The  crowning  faculty,  — 
crowning  a  pyramid  of  abilities,  —  which  em- 
powers the  Artist  to  do  this,  is  his  sensibility 
to  the  beautiful,  what  may  be  called  his  glori- 
fying faculty.  Hence  the  Artist  is  not  a  copy- 
ist, a  sensuous  imitator  of  Nature,  a  mere  re- 
flector ;  his  brain  is  not  a  daguerreotype  plate 
to  be  painted  on  by  the  sun's  rays.  He  is  his 
own  sun,  and  prints  on  an  object  fresh  lines 


58  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

that  make  it  a  new  picture.  By  experience,  by 
contemplation  of  Nature,  his  susceptive  mind 
is,  to  be  sure,  ever  enriched.  As  Wordsworth 
says  :  — 

"  From  Nature  and  her  overflowing^soul 
I  had  received  so  much  that  all  my  thoughts 
Were  steeped  in  feeling." 

That  he  be  so  enriched  the  wealth  of  his  aesthetic 
endowment  must  be  refined  by  his  delight  in 
the  beautiful.  Within  him  there  throbs  more 
feeling  than  he  needs  for  his  every  day  individ- 
ual use,  and  the  superflux  he  throws  out  in 
products  having  in  them  so  much  that  they 
live  for  generations,  imparting  life  to  others, 
like  the  sun  who  from  his  abounding  bosom 
projects  warm  globes  to  animate  space. 

Under  poetic  impulse  the  Artist  throws  him 
out  of  and  above  his  common  self  up  to  a  purer, 
freer  plane,  where  his  vision  is  so  penetrative, 
so  elective,  as  to  bring  before  him  what  is  most 
choice.  Life  is  full  of  wonders,  is  all  wonder  ; 
and  it  is  the  Artist's  privilege  to  be  in  closer 
rapport  with  the  divine  essence  out  of  which 
springs  this  manifold  wonder  ;  and  thence,  be- 
come originative,  he  breathes  into  his  work 
some  of  the  breath  from  the  creative  spirit. 
To  the  grand  and  mysterious  and  beautiful  in 


ART.  59 

Nature  his  soul  gives  a  livelier  echo,  and  thus 
is  he  able  to  make  his  work,  as  Goethe  says, 
"  seem  at  once  natural  and  supernatural."  The 
only  faithful  reporter  and  interpreter  of  Nature 
is  the  poetic  reporter.  No  object,  whether  in 
Nature,  or  feigned  in  harmony  therewith  by 
the  imagination,  can  be  fully,  distinctly  seen, 
except  by  the  light  that  flares  higher  and 
brighter  in  him  than  in  others,  the  light  of  the 
beautiful.  Not  the  most  gifted  can  reproduce 
the  whole,  can  reveal  the  full  secret ;  the  genial 
hand  can  tell  enough  to  give  stimulating  inti- 
mations, visionary  glimpses  of  much  that  is 
untold.  Yet  in  itself  a  work  of  Art  should 
not  be  vague  or  indecisive  ;  a  finite  whole  in 
one  sense,  it  so  speaks  to  the  soul  as  to  let 
us  feel  that  it  comes  out  of  the  Infinite,  and 
it  points  us  thither 

Art,  then,  is  a  projection  out  of  the  inmost 
of  gifted,  poetic-minded  men.  Its  source  is 
given,  quite  unsconsciously,  in  a  few  lines  of 
Raphael's  letter  to  his  friend,  Count  Baldas- 
sare  Castiglione :  "  As  to  the  Galatea,"  he 
writes,  "  I  should  hold  myself  to  be  a  great 
Master  were  only  half  of  the  great  things  in 
*t  that  your  excellency  writes  to  me.  In  your 
words,  however,  I  find  proof  of  the  love  you 


6O  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

bear  me.  Let  me  here  say  to  you  that,  in 
order  to  paint  a  beautiful  female  figure,  I 
should  have  to  see  many,  and,  moreover,  under 
the  condition  that  your  excellency  stood  near 
me,  to  choose  the  most  beautiful.  But  as  a  right 
judgment  is  as  rare  as  is  a  beautiful  woman, 
/  make  tise  of  a  certain  idea  which  springs  up  in 
my  mind.  Whether  or  not  this  possesses  ar- 
tistic excellence  I  know  not,  but  I  strive  to  com- 
pass it"  The  brains  of  Raphaels  and  Leo- 
nardos and  Phidiases,  these  are  the  nests,  high 
and  lonely  like  the  eagle's,  overlooking  the 
plains  below,  whence  issues  winged  Art.  A 
visionary  realm  is  that  of  Art,  too  ethereal  to 
be  but  partially  incarnated ;  and  this  is  its 
source, —  a  longing  for,  an  inward  mounting 
towards,  perfection,  a  striving  after  beautiful 
possibilities.  Art  is  an  iris-hued  transfigura- 
tion of  plodding  prosaic  life,  a  rainbow  everlast- 
ingly spanning  the  storm-drenched  world. 


X. 

TRAVEL. 

WOULD  you  make  the  most  of  a  capable 
youth  ?  Drive  him  away  from  home,  even 
should  his  home  be  a  vast  metropolis,  a  London, 
a  Paris,  a  New  York.  If  he  never  quits  it  he 
gets  withered  and  localized  into  a  cockney  or  a 
badaud.  A  youth  of  mental  force,  especially 
one  with  the  boldness  of  genius,  will  not  wait 
to  be  driven.  Travel  is  a  lively  educator  ;  it 
opens,  it  expands,  it  liberates  the  mind.  Ob- 
serve those  citizens  —  of  the  better  class  so- 
called  —  who  never  go  beyond  their  county  or 
state  ;  they  get  to  be  so  self-complacent  about 
petty  home-possessions,  so  intellectually  (and 
unconsciously)  emaciated,  from  ever  breathing 
the  same  close  mental  air,  so  redolent  of  pro- 
vincial egotism,  that  the  sole  self-defense  their 
friends  have  is  to  laugh  outright  at  such  child- 
ish limitation. 

When  a  competent  man  travels,  he  goes  out 
of  himself,  he  projects  him  beyond  the  narrow 
circle  of  home-activities  and  customary  influ- 


62  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

ences  ;  his  faculties  by  being  freed,  are  strength- 
ened. To  go  out  of  one's  self,  to  forget  one's 
self,  is  morally  the  most  gainful  movement  that 
can  be  made.  Akin  to  this  is  the  intellectual 
liberation  by  travel,  which,  like  the  moral,  is 
often  rich  in  wide-spread  benefit.  Had  Shake- 
speare not  travelled  up  to  London,  what  would 
have  become  of  us  ?  We  should  have  had  no 
Lear,  no  Tempest,  no  Hamlet,  no  Imogen. 
Stratford-on-Avon,  with  neighboring  Warwick, 
could  not  have  fed  the  brain  out  of  which  were 
to  spring  these  wonders  and  giants.  Much 
of  circumstance  genius  can  overcome ;  such 
conquest  is  one  of  its  functions ;  but  it  must 
have  room  for  the  free  play  of  its  sprightly 
brood.  Who  will  pretend  that  if  Raphael  had 
been  born  and  bred  in  picture-banning  Con- 
stantinople, the  world  would  have  been  replen- 
ished with  his  Madonnas  ?  Goethe  was  im- 
pelled to  travel  away  from  prosaic  Frankfort, 
and  his  long  life  in  genial  Weimar  he  freshened 
and  indoctrinated  by  travel  into  France,  into 
Switzerland,  into  Italy.  The  best  thing  that 
Franklin  ever  did  for  himself  was  to  run  away 
from  Boston  when  a  boy.  A  new  city  with 
new  influences  wrought  freshly  on  his  self- 
reliance  and  resources,  and  unfolded  his  mental 


TRA  VEL.  63 

means  more  decisively.  His  remarkable  indi- 
viduality he  brought  with  him  from  his  birth- 
place, but  its  full  development  was  due  to  his 
abode  in  Philadelphia.  Travel  to  England  com- 
pleted Franklin's  early  self-education. 

One  of  Milton's  biographers,  Sir  Egerton 
Brydges,  a  genial  tory,  thinks  that  Milton's 
journey  to  Italy  in  his  twenty-ninth  year  was 
"the  preservative  of  Milton's  poetical  genius 
against  his  political  adoptions."  Certain  it  is, 
that  what  he  saw  and  heard  and  learnt  and  felt 
in  Italy,  was  a  phasis  in  his  culture  which 
nothing  else  could  have  supplied.  This  journey 
Milton  shortened,  being  ashamed,  as  he  says, 
to  remain  abroad  enjoying  himself,  while  his 
countrymen  were  fighting  for  freedom  at  home. 
For  twenty  years  politics  withdrew  him  from 
poetry.  When  he  returned  from  Italy  Milton 
was  thirty-one.  Dante  was  thirty-six  when 
banished  from  Florence.  Had  he  been  re- 
called after  a  year  or  two,  he  would,  with  his 
fiery  temperament,  have  thrown  himself  again 
upon  the  sea  of  Italian  politics  at  that  stormy 
period,  and  the  calm,  abstracted  moods,  needed 
for  high  poetry,  would  not  have  been  found. 
To  Dante's  enforced  travel  for  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life  the  world  probably  owes  one 
of  the  great  epics  of  literature. 


64  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

Of  single  journeys  the  most  momentous 
was  that  of  Luther  to  Rome.  In  after  life  he 
declared,  "  I  would  not  for  a  hundred  thousand 
florins  not  have  seen  Rome,  not  have  seen 
Rome,  not  have  seen  Rome.  I  should  have 
been  troubled  for  fear  that  I  did  the  Pope  in- 
justice." The  opening  of  such  eyes  on  what 
they  saw  in  Rome,  and  on  the  way  thither,  was 
an  effect  of  travel  which  in  turn  became  a  cause 
as  potent  and  prolific  as  any  that  human  in- 
sight can  trace. 

A  restless  yearning  often  drives  men  of 
creative  power  abroad  to  enlarge  themselves,  to 
feast  their  hungry  faculties  on  variety.  Homer 
and  Plato  and  Pythagoras  were  great  travel- 
lers. yEschylus  did  part  of  his  travel  as  a  sol- 
dier, and  won  the  crown  of  preeminent  bravery 
at  Marathon  and  again  at  Salamis.  Socrates 
went  on  three  military  expeditions,  two  of 
them  into  remote  Thrace.  Demosthenes  liked 
travel ;  so  did  Cicero  and  Virgil  and  Horace. 
Nor  should  we  forget  the  saints,  Augustin  and 
Jerome  and  Chrysostom  and  Thomas  Aquinas. 
To  Montaigne  and  Cervantes  travel  was  a 
harvest ;  and  so  it  was  to  Montesquieu,  Voltaire, 
Rousseau,  to  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Byron, 
Shelley. 


TRA  VEL.  65 

The  most  majestic  and  far-seeing  of  travellers 
was  Columbus.  He  travelled  in  search  of  a 
World  and  found  it.  Three  centuries  later, 
while  yet  the  natives  roamed  on  the  hither  side 
of  the  Alleghanies,  there  grew  up  in  this  new 
world  a  boy,  who,  taking  on  himself  at  the 
age  of  sixteen  the  engagements  of  manhood, 
started  on  his  travels,  an  authorized  surveyor, 
towards  the  wilds  of  the  Shenandoah  and  the 
mountains  beyond,  training  his  courageous  eye 
among  untamed  Indians,  inuring  his  heroic 
limbs  to  toil  and  storm,  thus  unconsciously 
educating  himself  for  the  great  journey  he  was, 
in  mature  manhood,  to  make  from  Cambridge 
in  Massachusetts  to  Yorktown  in  Virginia ;  a 
journey  which  lasted  about  six  years,  and  the 
fruits  whereof  may  be  judged  by  this,  that 
in  one  hundred  years  from  the  day  he  started 
on  that  journey  in  1776,  the  three  millions 
of  colonists  whose  national  independence  was 
secured  by  the  capture  of  Cornwallis  at  York- 
town,  will  have  grown  to  be  a  Republic  of 
more  than  forty  millions  of  souls,  the  most 
prosperous  and  most  progressive  nation,  the 
most  enlightened  and  most  influential  on  the 
globe.  A  few  years  after  the  capture  of  Corn- 
wallis, the  first  President  of  the  new  republic 
5 


66  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

granted  at  Philadelphia  an  audience  to  a  young 
French  traveller,  then  unknown,  Chateaubriand, 
who,  in  his  memoirs  written  half  a  century 
later,  thus  records  the  interview  :  "  Happy  am 
I  that  the  looks  of  Washington  fell  on  me. 
I  felt  myself  warmed  by  them  for  the  rest  of 
my  life." 

Alexander,  Caesar,  Napoleon  were  terrible 
travellers.  With  such  retinue  did  they  move, 
that  not  only  were  they  secure  against  being 
robbed,  but  were  strong  enough  to  rob  and 
sack  at  any  of  the  stations  of  their  numerous 
journeys.  But  to  humanity  even  more  event- 
ful than  these,  are  another  class,  who  may 
be  called  travellers  paramount,  namely  Tribes, 
Hordes,  Peoples.  Under  a  sway  resistless,  and 
deeper  than  any  conscious  impulse,  do  they 
stretch  forward  on  their  long  endless  journey- 
ings.  Think  of  the  first  wave  which,  far  back 
in  the  dim  dawn  of  time,  started  westward, 
rolling  on,  we  know  not  how  far  and  how 
fast,  pushed  forward  by  stronger  waves,  and 
these  again  urged  onward  by  still  stronger, 
until,  out  of  the  vast,  mysterious  Asiatic  womb, 
the  whole  of  Europe  was  peopled  even  to  its 
westwardmost  islands.  Think  of  those  huge 
tidal  waves,  irresistible,  overwhelming,  which, 


TRAVEL.  67 

under  the  names  of  Goths,  Suevi,  Lombards, 
Burgundians,  Vandals,  swept  over  the  Roman 
Empire  in  the  early  centuries  of  our  era,  over- 
laying an  exhausted  population  with  fresh  de- 
posits of  human  breeds,  wherefrom  were  to 
spring  the  modern  nations  of  Europe,  out  of 
barbarian  grossness  emerging  self-crowned  with 
Literature  and  Art,  and  finally  with  the  great- 
est of  civilizers,  Science. 

Onward,  still  onward  they  again  rolled,  in 
the  tempestuous  track  of  the  bold  God-driven 
Columbus.  And  now,  while  this  new  World 
is  yet  but  sparsely  peopled,  already  have  the 
stoutest  of  them  pushed  across  our  wide  conti- 
nent, and  are  heaping  themselves  up  on  its 
western  shore,  preparing  to  roll  still  westward 
on  the  long,  broad  paths  of  the  Pacific. 

Seeing  what  we  have  seen,  and  knowing  oi} 
stronger  authority  than  that  of  Bishop  Berke- 
ley, that 

"  Westward  the  course  of  Empire  takes  its  way," 
were  it  a  mere  egotistic  imagination,  an  ethno- 
graphical impertinence,  to  foresee  that  at  no 
very  remote  time  the  descendants  of  those 
teeming  bands  of  stout  adventurous  travellers 
who,  a  dozen  centuries  ago,  in  spite  of  Roman 
Emperors  and  Roman  Legions,  took  possession 


68  BRIEF  ESSA  YS. 

of  Europe,  coming  out  of  Asia,  will  take  pos- 
session of  Asia,  coming  out  of  America  ?  Sav- 
ages, they  went  out  of  Asia ;  they  will  enter 
it,  men  of  the  same  force,  armed  with  all  the 
thousandfold  might  of  science  and  invention. 
A  race  ahead  of  all  other  races  in  knowledge 
and  mental  power,  and  yet  itself  but  partially 
unfolded,  and  in  the  full  swing  of  eager  prog- 
ress, will  meet  on  the  populous  shores  of  East- 
ern Asia,  a  people  aged,  stagnant,  a  completed 
people,  a  people  that  has  long  since  run  the 
range  of  its  innate  capacities,  a  people  that  has 
never  travelled.  The  stronger  a  race  is,  the 
wider  its  travel. 

What  if  we  imagine  the  later  waves  of 
population,  which,  starting  from  the  western 
slopes  of  the  Himalayas,  flooded,  to  fertilize, 
first  Western  Asia,  then  Eastern  Europe,  then 
Western  Europe,  then  America,  on  their  march 
displacing,  or  absorbing  into  their  stronger 
blood  less  capacious  breeds  —  what  if  we  ima- 
gine them  to  have  come  full  circle  in  their  toil- 
some travel  round  the  temperate  zone  of  the 
globe,  surging  in  triumphant  splendor  in  the 
heart  of  ample  Asia,  brandishing,  not  the  sword 
of  war,  but  a  far  more  potent  instrument  of 
conquest,  the  torch  of  Science,  blazing  with 


TRAVEL.  69 

clear,  accumulated,  thoughtful  might,  illumi- 
nating domains  at  present  undreamed  of? 
What  if  we  imagine  this  buoyant  multitude, 
loaded  with  the  mental  spoils  of  thousands  of 
years,  starting  again,  to  plant  through  Western 
Asia  and  Eastern  Europe  the  benefactions  of 
Science  and  Art  and  Culture,  and  the  blessings 
that  stream  from  the  general  usufruct  of  broad 
principles  and  intelligent  submission  to  divine 
law,  repeating,  under  far  higher  conditions, 
its  westward  travel,  sowing  everywhere,  along 
its  broadened  furrow,  truth  .and  beauty  and 
power  ? 


XI. 

OBEDIENCE. 

MOVING  to  the  rhythm  of  law,  the  life  that 
throbs  from  the  mighty  central  soul  gladdens 
with  its  pulse  all  the  arteries  of  the  Universe, 
forgetting  never  the  finest  capillaries  of  being. 
Of  this  animation  the  most  sparkling  result 
looks  through  the  eyes  of  man.  Within  his 
wonderful  self  a  man  carries  a  triple  life,  each 
a  boundless  power,  an  unfathomable  source,  — 
his  sensational  or  animal,  what  might  be  termed 
his  fleshly  life,  his  moral,  spiritual,  or  passional 
life,  which  supplies  the  fuel  and  motive  force  to 
his  being,  and  finally  the  life  intellectual,  whose 
office  is  that  of  the  ship's  rudder,  to  hold  the 
combined  lives  to  their  natural  or  chosen 
courses.  In  this  high  function  intellect  is 
aided  by  instinct,  which  is  a  wise  and  innate, 
though  unconscious,  power  of  self-direction. 
But  against  the  centrifugal  forces  within  a  man 
the  two  together,  instinct  and  intellect,  suffice 
not  at  times  to  keep  his  being  in  its  natural 
orbit.  The  hardest  to  enlighten  is  selfishness. 


OBEDIENCE.  "J\ 

Through  the  earlier  phases  of  general  human 
development,  man  delights  in  a  youthful  willful- 
ness, a  contradictory  lawlessness,  a  partial  self- 
destructive  indulgence. 

Among  the  later  discoveries  man  makes 
is,  that  his  well-being  depends  on  obedience  to 
law,  and  that  the  laws  he  is  to  obey  are  not 
usurping  tyrannies,  not  even  self-imposed  re- 
strictions, but  movements  of  growth,  impulses 
of  healthy  life,  which  invite  kindly  guidance 
in  order  to  work  as  cooperative  activities, — 
healthy  vivacities,  that  only  need  sympathetic 
assistance  and  furtherance.  Nature  is  as  me- 
thodical and  orderly  as  she  is  generous,  and  her 
generosity  is  only  available  to  those  who  per- 
ceive and  accept  her  method  and  her  order. 

What  if  you  were  to  set  yourself  to  quench 
the  life  of  outward  Nature,  to  arrest  the  rising 
grass  in  spring,  to  stay  the  cataract's  leap,  to 
cool  the  ripening  rays  of  July :  the  very  thought 
of  such  efforts  savors  of  lunacy.  Yet  this  is 
what  every  one  now  does  daily,  in  greater  or 
less  degree.  When,  in  eating  or  drinking,  in 
overwork  or  underwork,  asleep  or  awake,  ac- 
tively or  passively,  you  break  a  law  of  Nature, 
you  quench  some  of  her  life,  and  you  quench 
it  there  where  only  it  can  be  quenched,  tern- 


72  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

porarily,  partially,  personally.  You  throw  your- 
self out  of  the  wardship  of  that  beneficent 
wisdom  which  malces  itself  your  sleepless, 
almost  omnipotent,  guardian  and  servant.  And 
yet,  such  is  the  all-pervasive  force  of  Nature, 
her  inaccessible  vitality,  her  irreducible  might, 
and  such  our  dependence  upon  her,  our  in- 
dissoluble ties  to  her,  that  with  our  worst  law- 
lessness and  willfulness  we  can  but  partially 
forfeit  her  protection.  By  resisting  her  de- 
mands, bodies,  forms,  are  maimed  or  vitiated 
or  destroyed,  but  the  life  that  holds  them  in 
shape  is  inexpugnable.  At  the  acme  of  will- 
fulness, in  the  extreme  darkness  of  desperation, 
a  man  commits  suicide  :  his  purpose  is,  to  put 
an  end  to  himself.  He  cannot  do  it :  Nature's 
resource  is  too  deep  for  his  shallow  strokes  : 
she  baffles  him.  The  life  that  asserted  itself 
by  temporarily  animating  his  organized  body  is 
inextinguishable,  and  keeps  its  hold  for  another 
phase  of  being.  To  his  surprise,  and  at  first  to 
his  dismay,  he  finds  himself  still  alive :  he 
has  killed  his  body,  his  soul  he  cannot  kill. 
Through  his  imperishable  consciousness,  he 
finds  himself  not  only  alive  but  retarded,  ob- 
structed by  another,  a  crowning,  breach  of  law. 


XII. 

FREEDOM. 

THERE  are  who  affirm,  and  try  to  believe, 
that  indulgence  of  every  impulse  were  enjoy- 
ment of  freedom.  When  from  present  example 
and  from  history  it  is  proved  to  them  that  such 
indulgence  is  ever  followed  by  pain,  penance, 
enslavement,  death,  then  they  exclaim  that  man 
has  no  freedom  of  will. 

One-sided  indulgence  is  license,  not  liberty. 
Is  a  man  free  to  strike  his  neighbor  because  he 
is  angry  with  him  ?  Desire  is  not  free  will,  it 
is  not  even  will.  To  go  whither  impulse  drives 
is  to  be  the  toy  of  desire  or  its  victim.  This  is 
to  be  willful  as  children  are.  Every  child,  every 
man,  has  a  will,  many  wills  ;  but  no  children 
and  few  men,  very  few,  have  much  freedom  of 
will,  which  high  condition  is  only  then  attained 
when  there  is  coincidence  between  human  and 
divine  will,  a  condition  only  attainable  through 
the  full,  harmonious  activity  of  all  of  man's 
powers,  and  partially  attainable  through  the 
habitual  easy  empire  of  the  high  moral  powers 


74  BRIEF  ESS  A  VS. 

over  his  wants  and  conduct.  Only  with  com- 
pleted human  development  can  there  be  perfect 
freedom  of  will.  A  man's  liberty  is  exactly  in 
proportion  to  the  degree  of  his  unfolding.  The 
chief  men  of  Timbuctoo  are  immeasurably  less 
free  than  the  chief  men  of  London.  With  hu- 
man power  in  this  broad  sense  human  liberty 
ever  grows. 

The  ancient  destiny  was  the  Greek  concep- 
tion of  overruling  law,  checking,  baffling,  con- 
trolling human  effort.  But  the  Greek  spiritual 
nature  was  not  enough  developed  to  conceive 
of  this  Divine  law  in  its  full  beneficence  and 
absolute  justice.  Hence  the  Greeks,  and  like 
them  many  moderns,  nominal  Christians,  repre- 
sent, and  complain  of,  destiny  as  hard  and 
cruel ;  which  complaint  is  always  an  animal 
howl,  or  an  egotistic  agony. 

Men  in  whom  robust  intellect,  and  strong 
animal  or  self-seeking  passions  are  combined 
with  what  is  called  an  iron  will,  have  even  less 
freedom  of  will  than  many  who  are  intellect- 
ually and  actively  their  inferiors.  With  the 
world  such  men  often  succeed  in  their  aims ; 
but  if  so,  what  they  do  is  afterwards  undone ; 
for  unfailingly  as  the  physical  law  of  light,  the 
moral  law  asserts,  sooner  or  later,  its  absolute, 


FREEDOM.  75 

inevitable  dominion.  Force  of  will,  thus  com- 
bined, succeeds,  at  times  largely,  against  men, 
never  against  God.  Napoleon  was  the  most 
godless  man  of  his  age.  But  mostly  these  bold, 
bad  men,  who  never  even  near  the  condition  of 
freemen,  fail  in  their  life-time,  and  die  miserable 
and  powerless,  or  gnaw  their  lives  out  on  some 
St.  Helena,  or  stalk  about  among  their  fellows 
under  a  ban,  the  harmless  ghosts  of  their  for- 
mer selves,  pointed  at,  but  hot  heeded  or 
heard. 

To  be  unbound  is  no  more  to  be  free  than 
to  be  strong  in  will  and  intellect  is  to  be  free. 
To  be  let  loose  is  not  only  not  to  be  enfran- 
chised, it  may  be  a  step  towards  a  wider  dis- 
franchisement.  Within  close  tubes  which  carry 
their  precious  charge  safe  and  unwasted  to  the 
minutest  arterial  ramifications,  is  confined  the 
living  blood.  Make  a  breach  in  one  of  the  tubes, 
and  life  flows  away  in  the  liberated  current.  A 
type  is  this  of  all  being.  Being,  to  be  adequate, 
must  be  contained.  The  universe  of  being  is  a 
vast  organic  whole,  one  mighty  combined  unit 
made  up  of  countless  single  units  ;  and  that 
the  one  whole  abide  in  harmonious  combina- 
tion, and  that  each  constituent  enjoy  its  indi- 
vidual essential  being,  each  must  be  withheld 


76  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

from  infringing  on  its  neighbors,  must  keep  to 
its  special  path.  Each  is  endowed  with  apti- 
tudes, capacities,  aspirations,  the  working  of 
which  constitutes  its  life.  By  misapplying 
these  aptitudes,  by  balking  these  aspirations, 
it  so  far  frustrates  its  life,  and  to  that  degree 
maims  its  freedom.  When  each  is  a  law  unto 
itself,  it  fulfills  its  end  and  feels  itself  free  ; 
that  is,  when  by  inward  power  and  by  integrity 
of  aim,  it  completely  obeys  the  law  of  its  being, 
and  thus  fully  unfolds  its  innate  virtue.  To 
violate  this  law  is  so  much  anarchy,  a  step  back 
towards  chaos. 

To  all  life  and  movement  law  is  a  sheath  of 
safety.  And  thence,  man's  best  business  is  to 
study,  discover,  understand,  and  administer  law. 
The  laws  which  govern  conscious  human  acts 
are  moral  laws,  and  as  consciousness  is  the 
highest  attribute  of  life,  the  laws  which  rule 
conduct  are  to  man  the  most  momentous. 
Equally  with  all  other  Divine  laws  they  are 
inviolable.  Every  breach  of  them  brings  loss 
and  an  abridgment  of  freedom.  Continuous 
breach  of  them  leads  to  deeper  and  deeper 
servitude,  ending  in  forfeiture  of  the  privileges 
of  consciousness,  which  forfeiture  is  moral 
death.  What  to  the  life  of  the  body  are  the 


FREEDOM.  77 

arterial  tubes,  which  from  the  heart  unrest- 
ingly  carry  blood  to  feed  every  corporeal  func- 
tion, such  are  the  moral  laws  (issuing  from  his 
soul)  which  carry  strength  to  the  hourly  con- 
duct of  the  man.  They  confine  and  guide  all 
its  motions,  that  these,  performing  healthily 
their  appointed  offices,  may  enjoy  their  full  life 
and  freedom. 

The  organism  of  man  is  a  hierarchy,  wonder- 
fully aggregated,  beautifully  proportioned,  ex- 
quisitely adjusted  out  of  seemingly  oppugnant 
constituents.  When  all  of  these  shall  perform 
each  its  healthy  function,  will  ensue  active  and 
most  productive  harmony.  For  the  perform- 
ance of  its  healthy  function,  not  only  does  no 
one  of  these  many  and  diverse  constituents  re- 
quire the  suppression  or  weakening  of  any  other 
one,  but  not  one  of  them,  neither  the  highest 
nor  the  lowest  in  the  scale,  can  reach  its  full 
function  without  the  cooperation  of  each  and 
all  of  the  others.  At  the  summit  of  the  scale, 
the  regulators  of  human  movement  are  the 
generic  feelings,  the  spiritual  and  moral  sensi- 
bilities, whose  approval  is  the  touchstone  of 
conduct,  whose  joy  is  the  benediction  of  life, 
whose  full  satisfaction  were  the  triumphant 
shout  of  freedom. 


XIII. 

THE   BRAIN. 

MEN  have  mind  in  proportion  to  brain.  The 
brain  of  idiots  weighs  from  fifteen  to  thirty 
ounces  ;  the  full,  healthy  human  brain  from 
forty  to  sixty.  Mr.  Davis  of  England,  having 
a  very  large  cranial  collection,  about  eighteen 
hundred  specimens  from  all  quarters  of  the 
globe,  ascertained  the  relative  volume  of  brain 
of  different  races  by  rilling  the  skulls  with  dry 
sand.  He  found  that  the  European  averaged 
92  cubic  inches,  the  Oceanic  89,  the  Asiatic 
88,  the  African  86,  the  Australian  81.  Meas- 
urements made  by  the  late  Dr.  Morton  of 
Philadelphia,  who  had  a  collection  of  over  a 
thousand  skulls,  accorded  in  the  main  with 
those  of  Mr.  Davis,  and  confirmed  Blumen- 
bach's  scale  of  races,  the  Caucasian  brain 
being  the  largest,  the  Mongolian  the  next  in 
size,  then  the  Malay,  then  the  American  Indian, 
the  Ethiopian  being  the  smallest. 

The  brain  is  made  up  of  nerves  and  nervous 
substance  ;  and  in  proportion  as  to  the  simplest 


THE  BRAIN.  79 

form  of  brain  (a  mere  rudimentary  ganglion) 
parts  are  added,  mental  power  increases.  Not 
only  is  there  no  intellect  and  no  emotion  with- 
out nerves,  there  is  no  sensation,  no  voluntary 
movement  Nervous  fibres  enfold,  embrace, 
penetrate  into  the  body  and  its  every  limb  and 
tissue  :  only  through  them  can  the  whole  and 
each  part  show  life.  Consider  the  power  of 
nerves  :  they  give  to  the  swift  his  fleetness, 
to  the  strong  his  strength ;  without  them  no 
muscle  can  contract,  no  lung  expand.  These 
white  threads  are  the  conductors  of  force,  the 
primary  engines  of  motion,  the  arbiters  of  pain, 
the  dispensers  of  joy.  Now  reflect,  that  of 
this  most  refined,  most  powerful  material,  this 
sublimated  extract  of  matter,  there  are  packed 
away  in  the  scull  from  fifty  to  sixty  ounces, 
from  three  to  four  pounds  of  a  substance  that 
has  the  highest  potency  among  visible  agents, 
To  think  that  for  centuries  naturalists,  physi- 
ologists, philosophers,  moralists,  psychologists 
have  had  this  tremendous  battery  of  the  soul 
darting  at  them  messages  which  none  of  them 
could  read.  Before  their  eyes  ever  sparkled 
this  divine  treasury  of  revelations,  and  none 
learnt  how  to  prize  its  transcendent  worth  ; 
until,  at  the  very  end  of  the  i8th  century,  a 


80  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

large-brained  German,  GALL,  by  one  of  those 
spontaneous  springs  of  genius  whereby  the 
mind  leaps  from  a  fact  to  its  law,  got  upon  the 
track  which  after  years  of  vigilant  observation, 
patient,  conscientious  thought,  led  him  to  the 
discovery  of  the  mighty  function  of  this  con- 
fluent, multitudinous,  symmetric  mass  of  nerv- 
ous fibres,  this  conglomerate  constellation  of 
magnetic  cells  —  led  him  to  the  discovery  that 
this  great  organ  of  the  mind  (using  mind  to 
embrace  all  impulsive  and  emotional  as  well 
as  intellectual  movement)  is  not  one  single 
organ,  but  a  congeries  of  organs,  each  the  in- 
strument of  a  separate  mental  power. 

Pascal's  saying  that  he  could  not  conceive  of 
a  man  without  a  head,  has  a  deep  significance 
when  we  reflect  that  Nature  never  makes  two 
heads,  any  more  than  two  faces  or  two  leaves, 
alike,  and  that  the  differences  in  the  size  and 
shape  of  heads  are  caused  and  controlled  by 
the  mysterious  irresistible  motion  of  electrified 
nervous  cords.  To  swap  heads  were  to  swap 
beings.  The  man  is  his  head,  or  rather,  that 
which  shapes  his  head,  the  vivid  inspired  brain 
within  it.  Contrast  the  head  of  Napoleon  with 
that  of  Murat,  the  head  of  Shakespeare  with 
that  of  George  III.  the  head  'of  Pope  Borgia 


THE  BRAIN.  8 1 

with  that  of  Melancthon.  These  contrasts  hint 
at  the  creative  potency  of  brain  nerves.  Run 
a  line  from  just  above  the  eyebrows  backwards, 
an  inch  above  the  ear,  and  cut  off  the  chin 
(which  no  mere  animal  has)  and  you  have  a 
type  of  the  head  and  brain  of  animals  next 
below  man.  The  head,  thus  mutilated,  is  un- 
human.  To  humanize  it,  instead  of  running 
the  line  horizontally  from  the  root  of  the  nose, 
run  it  vertically  about  three  inches,  and  you 
have  the  outline  of  the  forehead,  the  beaming 
forehead  of  man,  "  the  front  of  Jove  himself." 
But  still,  if  from  the  top  of  this  line  you  run 
another  nearly  at  right  angles  to  it  with  hardly 
any  curve,  you  have  not  a  man,  you  have  a 
fearful  creature  with  only  animal  propensities 
and  intellect,  an  intellectual  monster.  But, 
from  the  top  of  the  forehead  spring  an  arch, 
and  you  have  —  in  proportion  to  the  height 
and  width  of  the  arch  —  a  vaulting  space 
for  the  play  of  those  great  cerebral  organs, 
through  whose  instrumentality  man  has  his 
high  humanity,  the  organs  of  his  broad  generic 
feelings,  his  spiritual  and  moral  powers. 

Through  the  discoveries  of  Gall  we  are  now 
enabled   to   make   these  impressive  and  most 
significant  general  partitions  of  the  brain  ;  but 
6 


82  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

of  such  partitions  Gall  himself  had  at  first  no 
inkling.  He  started  with  no  theory.  The  dawn 
of  his  discovery  was  in  his  schooldays,  when, 
beaten  in  learning  by  rote  by  inferior  class- 
mates, he  was  led  to  observe,  —  urged  doubt- 
less by  his  vexation,  —  that  those  who  excelled 
in  verbal  memory  had  mostly  prominent  eyes. 
To  couple  two  such  facts,  at  so  early  an  age, 
denoted  a  scientific,  philosophic  capacity.  Ob- 
serving this  coincidence  at  another  school,  and 
afterwards  at  the  university,  he  conceived  that 
the  outward  prominence  was  caused  by  the 
action  of  the  brain.  From  this  point  the  step 
was  short  to  the  conjecture,  that  if  this  were 
so  there  would  be  other  similar  conjunctions. 
Thus,  year  after  year,  he  went  on  making  ob- 
servations and  deductions  from  extremes  of 
cranial  conformation,  visiting  prisons,  court- 
rooms, schools,  hospitals,  questioning  friends 
and  acquaintance,  even  accosting  strangers  in 
whom  he  perceived  any  remarkable  configura- 
tion. In  1796,  in  his  thirty-ninth  year,  he 
gave  in  Vienna,  where  he  lived  as  a  practicing 
physician,  his  first  course  of  lectures  on  the 
physiology  of  the  brain. 

What  is  the  fruit  of  Gall's  work  ?     This  it 
is :  (and  when  did  the  thought  of  man  produce 


THE  BRAIN.  83 

fruit  of  higher  flavor  and  more  nourishing  ?) 
that  the  discovery  of  the  function  of  the  brain 
reveals  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind ; 
that  the  disclosure  of  the  physiology  of  this 
huge,  crowded,  convoluted  pile  of  precious, 
most  expensive,  nervous  material  opens  wide 
at  last  the  portal  to  the  resplendent,  immense, 
mysterious,  unimaginably  beautiful,  temple  of 
Psychology.  Ponder  the  roll  of  mental  facul- 
ties as  here  presented,  presented  in  a  distribu- 
tion, before  Gall  not  suspected  or  conceived  of, 
which  indeed  could  not  have  been  imagined  by 
any  human  intellect  or  combination  of  intel- 
lects, so  proportioned  is  it,  so  logical,  so  pene- 
trative, so  divine.  Not  by  intuition  alone  could 
this  order  and  allotment  have  been  seized  or 
even  approached,  but  only  by  the  insight  of 
genius,  working  patiently  and  lovingly  upon 
the  broadest,  most  various,  most  expressive, 
most  pregnant  of  Nature's  facts  and  phenom- 
ena. 

Through  the  objective  method  what  signif- 
icant symmetry,  what  a  philosophical  evolution 
is  here  exhibited,  which  never  could  have  been 
reached  through  the  subjective.  In  intellectual 
movement  what  a  graduated  ascent  from  the 
individual  to  the  generic  ;  from  the  powers 


84  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

that  note  the  crowd  of  visible,  tangible,  phys- 
ical objects,  with  their  properties  of  form,  size, 
weight,  color,  (properties  common  to  all  and 
inseparable  from  each)  up  through  the  relations 
of  space  and  time  and  the  infinitude  of  per- 
sonal, historical,  and  scientific  facts,  to  the 
great  generalizing,  combining  faculties,  the  su- 
preme intelligences,  which  enable  men  to  pro- 
vide, to  organize,  to  forecast,  to  deduce,  to 
classify,  and  which,  engaged,  in  calm  majestic 
action,  to  the  service  of  the  spiritual  and  moral 
sensibilities,  with  them  unite  to  constitute  the 
high  Reason,  that  lordly,  sacred  gift,  which  em- 
powers man,  in  the  government  of  himself  and 
his  inheritance,  the  earth,  to  coact  with  the 
divine  Regency. 

By  this  objective  process,  observing  and 
studying  the  brain  intently,  sagaciously,  per- 
sistently, for  years,  Gall  revealed  likewise  the 
wonderful  organization  and  character  of  the 
other,  and  by  much  the  larger  division  of  the 
mind,  the  affective  portion,  that  embracing  the 
feelings.  Here  is  displayed  again  a  graduated 
ascension  from  the  personal  to  the  universal, 
from  propensities  to  emotions,  from  the  self- 
preservative  to  the  self-expanding,  from  ap- 
petites and  impulses,  which  man  has  in  com- 


THE  BRAIN.  85 

mon  with  animals,  to  the  wide,  deep,  disinter- 
ested sensibilities  which  make  his  humanity, 
from  self-seeking  dispositions  up  to  innate 
senses  of  justice  and  reverence,  to  joy  in  the 
sublime  and  the  beautiful,  to  faith,  hope,  and 
charity. 

From  the  discoveries  of  Gall  legitimate  de- 
ductions are,  that  the  brain  is  the  instrument 
of  mind  ;  that  the  brain  is  not  a  single  organ, 
but  a  congeries  of  organs,  the  function  of  each 
being  to  manifest  a  primitive  mental  power  of 
feeling  or  of  intellect ;  and  that,  other  things 
being  equal,  such  as  health,  temperament,  op- 
portunity, size  is  the  measure  of  power. 

Look  now  at  the  brain,  or  at  the  vaulted  roof, 
which  it  builds  for  its  protection,  and  shapes  to 
its  wants,  that  glittering  crown  to  the  upright 
majesty  of  man,  that  masterpiece  of  nature, 
which  Gall's  happy  gift  taught  him  to  read  with 
a  vision  so  true  as  to  discover  its  mighty  func- 
tion, through  that  discovery  laying  bare  the 
structure  and  composition  of  the  human  mind, 
its  power,  aims,  affiliations,  which  mental  phi- 
osophers,  from  Plato  to  Hume,  had  been  vainly 
trying  to  fathom  with  the  ever  short-coming 
help  of  their  one  dim  method  of  self-conscious- 
ness. Note  first  the  grouping  of  the  mental 


86  BRIEF  ESS  A  VS. 

organs.  The  perceptive,  the  elementary,  in- 
tellectual, lie  together  along  the  base  of  the 
frontal  brain.  Similarly,  the  elementary  affec- 
tive, the  organs  of  the  domestic  affections,  the 
primary  bonds  among  men,  form  another  group 
at  and  near  the  base  of  the  posterior  brain. 
Then,  between  these  two,  along  the  sides  and 
close  together,  are  the  energetic,  pugnacious, 
and  acquisitive  feelings,  what  might  be  called 
the  self-seeking  propensities.  Above  this  group, 
and  above  the  domestic  group,  in  the  upper 
part  of  the  rear  of  the  head,  come  the  organs 
of  what  may  be  termed  the  self-seeking  senti- 
ments. In  front  of  these  the  feelings  which 
give  the  glow  of  grandeur  and  of  beauty  to  the 
whole  mind,  expanding  it  as  by  their  position 
they  expand  the  upper  head  laterally  ;  and 
above  these,  in  the  coronal  region  of  the  brain, 
are  the  organs  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  sen- 
timents, whose  high  office  it  is  to  control  and 
temper  all  the  other  feelings,  and  which,  when 
associated  with  the  broad  ratiocinative  powers, 
—  whose  organs  have  the  highest  position  in 
the  forehead  —  present  the  noblest  type  of 
manhood. 

Here  then  are  presented  the  most  important, 
the  most  significant  facts  that  the   boundless 


THE  BRAIN.  87 

wealth  of  the  immeasurable  domains  of  nature 
can  furnish,  facts  which  offer  to  every  man  a 
clear  picture,  a  clean  analysis  of  his  mental 
structure,  the  like  of  which  for  validity,  dis- 
tinctness, reality,  was  never  even  approached 
before,  and  which  thus  open  the  way  to  the 
solution  of  profoundest  problems  in  psychical 
philosophy,  —  facts  genuine,  solid,  not  fancies 
honored  as  facts,  facts  purely  objective,  not 
"  vain  imaginations, "  as  Bacon  calls  them, 
drawn  out  of  a  brooding  brain,  but  transparent 
sunlit  phenomena,  brought  to  view  by  a  dis- 
covery which,  from  the  revelations  involved  in 
it,  may  be  called  sublime,  and  to  which  the 
dark  delvings  of  the  subtlest  metaphysician  are 
as  the  tentative  accents  of  infancy  to  the  re- 
sounding cadences  of  intelligent  manhood  from 
the  mouth  of  authority. 

The  students  and  expounders  of  man's  men- 
tal constitution,  why  have  they  not  only  failed 
to  discern  this  sure  source  of  light,  but  why, 
since  it  has  been  demonstrably  exposed,  do 
they  so  obstinately,  so  arrogantly  despise  it  ? 
Is  this  from  spiritual  and  intellectual  pride, 
from  an  egotistic  repugnance  to  be  beholden  to 
aught  but  their  own  inward  expedients,  from 
that  false  independence  which  stiffens  them 


88  BRIEF  ESSA  YS. 

into  defiance  of  the  supreme  will,  that  self- 
sufficiency  of  human  nature,  typified  in  the 
revolt  of  Satan  and  the  fable  of  the  fall  ? 

In  some  metaphysical  organizations  there  is 
scientific  ineptitude,  causing  tyranny  of  the 
subjective  over  the  objective  action  ;  and  thus, 
instead  of  steering  their  course  by  the  blaz- 
ing lights  of  Heaven,  they  grope  tremulously, 
sounding  forever  in  the  fog  of  consciousness. 
Some  philosophers  never  reach  so  high  a  plane 
of  philosophy  as  to  be  beyond  the  shadows 
cast  by  the  vulgar  vice  of  jealousy.  Some  have 
not  sympathy  enough  with  life,  with  its  infinite, 
and  infinitely  beautiful  motions  :  they  work  in 
the  rigid  harness  of  the  understanding,  and  so 
talk  round  and  round  a  subject  and  never  into 
it :  their  analysis  is  too  meagre,  too  unfur- 
nished, and  so  it  never  flowers  into  the  bloom 
of  synthesis.  Some  so  much  prefer  turning  on 
the  axis  of  their  own  consciousness  to  turning 
their  thought  outward  to  the  abundant  glory 
and  expressive  glow  of  God's  worlds,  that  for 
the  beneficent  unchanging  laws  of  His  founding 
they  substitute  shifting  fancies  and  excogitated 
doctrines  hardened  into  narrow  postulates,  into 
despotic  dogmas,  thus  striving  to  make  these, 
that  is,  conventional  human  ordinations,  their 


THE  BRALV.  89 

rule  of  life,  in  place  of  the  eternal  injunctions 
of  that  transcendent  supervisive  power,  the  ex- 
ploring of  whose  plans,  the  discovery  of  whose 
designs,  is  the  best  exercise  of  human  intellect, 
the  aspiring  to  know  whose  will  is  the  most 
healthy  movement  of  moral  activities. 


XIV. 

MATERIALISM. 

You  have  seen,  observant  reader,  an  old  hen 
that  has  hatched  a  nest  of  ducklings  ;  and  did 
you  mark  her  cackling  astonishment  and  alarm, 
when  for  the  first  time  she  happens  to  bring 
her  brood  near  a  pond,  and  the  little  semi- 
aquatic  fledglings,  with  a  simultaneous  joyful 
rush,  all  take  to  the  water  ?  Not  from  experi- 
ence do  they  know  that  water  is  one  of  their 
elements.  The  materialists,  and  those  who 
would  make  experience  our  sole  teacher,  are 
the  puzzled  hen,  and  set  up  a  half  angry  cackle 
when  you  and  I,  spiritual  earthlings,  betake 
us  to  spirit  as  an  element  native  to  our  nature, 
wherein  we  move  with  untaught  delight,  im- 
pelled, too,  like  the  ducklings,  by  an  innate 
impulse,  and  one  infinitely  higher  and  richer 
than  that  which  drives  them  to  the  pond.  If 
traceable  antecedents  were  the  sole  causes,  the 
cause  of  the  ducklings  taking  to  the  water  was 
the  hen's  happening  to  come  near  the  pond. 
But  what  had  her  brood  been  chicks  instead 
of  ducklings  ? 


MA  TERIALIS.M.  9 1 

A  hundred  bricks,  set  up  in  file,  all  go  down 
one  after  the  other.  Is  the  fall  of  each  of  the 
hundred  caused  by  the  fall  of  each  immediate 
antecedent,  there  being  thus  a  hundred  causes  ? 
Secondarily,  it  is  ;  primarily,  the  fall  of  each 
and  of  the  whole  is  caused  by  a  mental  move- 
ment, by  a  will  directing  a  hand.  So,  every 
incident  in  our  life  is  one  of  a  series,  acted 
on  secondarily  by  an  immediate  antecedent, 
the  primary  source  of  the  existence  and  con- 
dition of  each  incident  being  an  intangible 
essence,  a  living  power  within  us,  superior  to, 
predominant  over,  our  outward  acts. 

To  say  that  we  learn  everything  from  ex- 
perience is  to  say  that  we  get  our  all  from 
circumstances,  that  is,  from  what  is  about  us, 
which  were  to  mistake  influences  for  causes. 
Whence  come  circumstances  ?  What  are  they  ? 
What  can  they  be  but  pure  creatures  of  mind, 
the  busy  product  of  past  marriage  between 
passion  and  intellect  ?  All  present  existent 
circumstances  must  be  the  offspring  of  mind  ; 
they  can  have  no  other  parentage,  and  their 
weight  and  multiplicity  is  in  proportion  to, 
is  utterly  dependent  on,  the  force  and  quality 
of  mental  action.  Were  experience  our  only 
teacher,  mankind  would  have  remained  un- 


92  BRIEF  ESSA  VS. 

civilized,  for  civilization  can  only  be  reached 
and  advancement  achieved  through  a  series  of 
thoughtful  efforts,  interior  originalities,  mental 
projections  beyond  experience.  Of  Columbus 
it  may  be  said,  that  he  first  discovered  the 
Western  Continent  in  his  brain,  and  then  veri- 
fied the  discovery  by  experiment.  The  origi- 
nator, the  maker  of  facts,  can  be  no  other  than 
mind,  and  mind  controls  the  observation  and 
employment  of  those  already  existing.  Auto- 
nomic  life  the  mind  must  have,  or  it  could  not 
be  :  some  power  of  self-impulsion  is  implied 
in  its  being. 

•  The  printed  words  that  I  am  reading,  whence 
are  they  ?  They  come  through  the  composi- 
tor's type-box.  Where  does  he  get  them  ?  In 
the  manuscript  before  him.  And  the  words 
in  the  manuscript,  whence  are  they  ?  From 
the  mind  of  the  writer.  Every  word  is  an 
offshoot  from  thought.  Every  deed  of  man 
is  preceded  by  a  thought.  In  the  most  trivial 
movement,  immaterial  action  is  the  antecedent 
and  producer  of  the  material.  Every  result 
brought  about  by  human  contrivance  and  will 
is  an  embodied  finishing  whose  beginning  is 
a  spiritual  seed  sown  in  the  brain.  No  gross- 
est act  but  existed  first  in  thought  before  it 


MATERIALISM.  93 

took  body.  Without  thinking,  a  man  would 
go  without  his  dinner.  Every  act  proves  a 
precedent  thought.  This  is  an  absolute  law 
of  mind.  As  all  human  acts  presuppose  hu- 
man thought,  so  superhuman  acts  presuppose 
superhuman  thought.  A  man  is  a  superhu- 
man act,  and  the  existence  of  a  man  demon- 
strates the  preexistence  of  God.  But  mate- 
rialists not  being  willing  to  entertain  the  idea 
of  God,  this  exposition  will  not  be  accepted  by 
minds  in  which,  to  use  the  language  of  Mr. 
Hazard  in  his  profound  work l  on  "  Causation 
and  Freedom  in  Willing,"  "  admiration  of  the 
minutely  perfect  is  much  more  active  than 
admiration  for  the  sublimely  vast,"  minds  not 
endowed  to  enjoy,  and  therefore  to  profit  by, 
thoughts  on  the  infinite  and  immeasurable, 
minds  not  open  to  mysterious  suggestions. 

Most  men,  even  among  the  highly  organized, 
are  defective  in  one  direction  or  other.  Some 
are  born  without,  or  with  very  weak,  musical 
sensibility  ;  some  with  small  faculty  of  reason- 
ing ;  others  without  feeling  for  the  beautiful ; 
Dr.  Johnson  had  no  sense  of  smell.  Material- 

1  Two  Letters  on  Causation  and  Freedom  in  Willing,  ad- 
dressed to  John  Stuart  Mill.  By  Rowland  G.  Hazard.  Bos- 
ton :  Lee  &  Shepard,  1869. 


94  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

ists  are  born  with  feeble  spiritual  intuition. 
They  are  truncated,  and  truncated  at  the  top. 
They  lack  the  higher  imagination  ;  they  know 
not  the  sublimity  of  awe.  Their  spiritual  sen- 
ses are  dull.  Hence  their  minds  are  compara- 
tively superficial,  and  are  insufficient. 

Metaphysics,  having  to  do  with  the  laws  of 
mind  and  of  being,  must  deal  with  the  spiritual. 
Nay,  spiritual  intuitions,  emotional  suscepti- 
bilities, are  the  best  of  its  substance.  The 
man  who  cannot  turn  a  tune,  who  takes  no 
delight  in  Beethoven  or  Bellini,  would  you  go 
to  him  for  the  laws  and  capacities  of  music  ? 
Strictly  speaking,  a  materialist  cannot  be  a 
metaphysician,  a  mental  philosopher.  His  can- 
not be  what  aesthetically  is  called  a  creative 
mind ;  and  to  be  a  good  mental  philosopher, 
there  must  be  a  power  of  intuitive  perception 
that  is  akin  to  the  creative  gift  of  high  poetry. 
Tell  him,  with  Epictetus,  that  he  is  a  soul 
bearing  about  a  corpse,  and  he  will  deem  your 
talk  foolishness.  And  yet,  to  get  thoroughly 
at  any  movement,  or  even  at  any  condition  of 
being,  there  is  but  one  track,  and  that  is  along 
the  line  of  light  that  flashes  from  our  own  soul 
into  the  soul  of  things.  By  no  other  can  the 
intellect  penetrate  beyond  surfaces.  "The  only 


MATERIALISM.  95 

cause,"  I  quote  again  from  Mr.  Hazard,  "  of 
which  we  have  any  idea,  is  the  exercise  of  suf- 
ficient power  in  the  effort  of  an  intelligent 
being." 

Was  the  fall  of  an  apple  the  cause  of  the 
discovery  of  gravitation,  or  only  the  occasion  ? 
Was  not  the  cause  in  the  mental  aptitude  of 
Newton  for  taking  a  hint  from  nature,  and  for 
tracing  ordinary  superficial  phenomena  to  their 
deep  source  ?  On  that  same  day  hundreds  of 
eyes  saw  apples  fall,  but  only  the  brain  of  New- 
ton so  seized  the  spectacle  as  to  see  it  with 
interior  vision  ;  he  got  behind  the  phenome- 
non. And  still  behind  this  Newtonian  cause 
of  the  discovery  of  gravitation,  was  there  not 
that  supreme  cause  which  endowed  him  to 
make  the  discovery  ?  In  living  phenomena 
and  motion  to  see  only  a  quality  of  matter, 
is  to  merge  spirit  in  matter,  to  dethrone  mind, 
and  subordinate  it  to  things.  By  the  habit 
of  doing  this  we  grow  short-sighted,  defraud- 
ing ourselves,  unmanning  ourselves,  by  a  volun- 
tary circumscription,  a  psychical  semi-suicide. 


XV. 

THE   LIFE   TO   COME. 

[The  following  was  written  to  a  friend  in  the  country,  a 
scholar  and  thinker,  a  refined  thoughtful  writer,  who  alter- 
nates studious  in-door  work  with  agricultural  enjoyments, 
and  the  improvement  of  helpful  animal  breeds.  In  the  let- 
ter, to  which  this  is  an  answer,  this  gentleman  had  thrown 
out  distrusts  and  paradoxical  hints,  to  pique  and  prompt  his 
correspondent.] 

WHEN,  to  provide  winter  food  for  your  cat- 
tle, you  plant  turnips,  you  look  sharply  to  the 
seed  ;  and  when  they  are  sprouted  you  do  your 
best  to  have  them  grow  thriftily  from  week  to 
week,  from  month  to  month,  so  that  may  be 
most  fully  attained  their  end  as  healthful  bo- 
vine nutriment.  You  overlook  their  whole  life, 
and  at  the  very  first  stage  your  thought  runs 
to  the  last,  each  successive  stage  being  a  step 
in  a  progression.  The  same  with  your  sheep. 
You  strive  for  the  best  breeds  to  begin  with, 
that  the  final  outcome  of  wool  or  mutton  may 
be  satisfying.  Every  day  of  each  individual 
animal  is  a  preparation  for  the  following  day, 
an  advancement  upon  the  preceding. 


THE  LIFE   TO  COME.  97 

For  your  little  boy  this  provident  looking 
ahead  is  still  more  eager,  and  far  more  com- 
prehensive ;  and  while  you  are  ever  watchful 
that  each  day  shall  be  a  solid  basis  for  to-mor- 
row, your  imaginations  are  leaping  forward  to 
his  school-days,  his  college-days,  his  manhood, 
his  wedding-day,  his  ripeness  and  success.  The 
present  is  father  to  the  future,  is  ever  shaping 
it.  By  a  logical  bond,  indissoluble,  the  two 
are  bound  together ;  and  the  higher,  the  more 
life-saturated,  the  more  significant  and  pro- 
phetic the  being  of  the  creature  is,  the  more 
pregnant  is  the  bond,  and  the  more  precious 
each  link  in  its  inseparable  enchainment.  Your 
life  is  a  palpitating,  categorical  continuity  (that 
has  an  Alemannic  smack  that  you  will  like), 
each  consecutive  joint  of  it  a  transmitter  of 
the  past  to  the  future,  its  earlier  throbs  as 
necessarily  linked  to  the  later  as  are  the  flashes 
of  the  two  termini  of  a  telegraphic  cable.  The 
end  cannot  be  sundered  from  the  beginning. 
And  when  and  where  is  the  end  ? 

In  your  interesting,  suggestive  letter  of 
March  10,  you  say  :  "  I  would  willingly  leave 
unsolved  all  the  questions  of  the  life  to  come, 
if  any  teacher  would  tell  me  how  to  settle  those 
of  this  life."  But  is  not  to-morrow,  next  month. 
7 


98  BRIEF  ESSA  VS. 

next  year,  a  part  of  our  life  to  come  ?  The 
man  who  is  indifferent  to  what  is  to  happen  to 
him  next  week  or  next  year  is  likely  to  find 
himself,  by  and  by,  in  the  poor-house  ;  for  if 
he  neglects  to  look  providently  toward  his  life 
to  come,  this  will  be  done  for  him  ;  it  must  be 
done  by  somebody.  A  turnip's  life  reaches 
its  end  in  six  months,  a  sheep's  in  as  many 
years,  and  a  man's  its  earthly  end  in  as  many 
decades.  They  who  guard  his  childhood,  if 
they  are  good  guardians,  have  ever  in  mind 
his  future  stages,  his  life  to  come.  "  In  bring- 
ing up  a  child,  think  of  its  old  age,"  says  deep 
Joubert  Is  a  man's  life  like  a  turnip's  or  a 
sheep's,  to  end  here  "  on  this  shoal  of  time," 
in  dust  ?  Is  a  man  but  a  brain-crowned  corpus, 
temporarily  endued  with  volition  and  ratiocina- 
tion and  imagination  and  aspiration  ?  After 
getting  rid  of  this  body,  I  should  not  like  to 
find  myself  in  the  poor-house  of  spirits. 

"  What  has  religion  to  do  with  Heaven  ? " 
you  ask.  Religion  is  the  wakefulness  of  those 
sensibilities  which  bind  our  present  being  to 
its  future  trans-earthly  being,  involving  thus 
a  consciousness  and  acknowledgment  of,  and 
a  submission  to,  the  vast  invisible  creative 
might  that  encompasses  us.  Sensation,  cau- 


THE  LIFE   TO  COME.  99 

tion,  and  intellect  combine  to  watch  provi- 
dently over  our  bodies  ;  religion  performs  a 
like  office  for  our  souls.  As  sensation  warns 
us  against  what  is  hurtful  to  body,  spiritual 
sensibility  warns  us  what  is  hurtful  to  soul, 
especially  in  the  life  which  is  to  come  after 
the  fleshly  envelope  shall  have  been  cast.  The 
being  of  the  body  implies  shape  and  size ;  the 
being  of  the  soul  implies  religious  appetence. 
If  we  have  souls,  or,  to  speak  more  philosophi- 
cally, if  we  are  souls,  we  must  be  religious  ; 
that  is,  we  must  feel  ourselves  coupled  to  the 
Infinite  Soul,  must  be  liable  to  be  prompted 
to  aspire  toward  the  Eternal,  be  ever  capable 
of  feeling  that  we  are  in  a  sublime,  unimagin- 
ably resplendent  presence,  be  subject  to  moods 
of  admiration  and  awe  at  thought  of  the  in- 
visible Mightiness.  Men  are  spirits.  Their 
being  spirits  gives  them  this  transcendent 
privilege.  Had  they  it  not,  they  were  not 
spirits,  and  might  adopt  as  their  creed  the 
saying  of  one  of  the  sprightly  interlocutors 
in  Beaumarchais'  famous  comedy,  the  "Mar- 
iage  de  Figaro  : "  — 

"Boire  quand  on  n'a  pas  soif,  faire  I'amour 
en  touts  temps  —  il  n'y  a  que  c.a  qui  nous  dis- 
tingue des  autres  betes." 


IOO  BRIEF  ESSA  YS. 

Wordsworth's  wish,  which  he  applied  to  his 
life  on  earth,  — 

"  And  I  could  wish  my  days  to  be 
Bound  each  to  each  by  natural  piety," 

should  embrace  our  whole  life,  so  that  from  the 
earth-stage  we  may  pass  without  jar  or  fall  or 
disappointment  to  the  ultra-earth  stage. 

"  They  end  not  here,  our  appetites  — 

On  earth  they  but  begin  : 
For  though  our  bodies  rot,  their  rights 
Survive  as  bliss  or  sin. 

M  A  marriage  deep,  without  divorce, 

Is  that  of  spirit  and  flesh, 
And  from  the  cold  relapsing  corpse 
Springs  life  forever  fresh. 

"  The  body's  members  are  no  toys 
For  the  soul's  sublunar  play  : 
But  counters  that,  in  griefs  or  joys, 
Sum  what  the  soul  must  pay. 

"  How  fruitful  is  the  littleness 

Wherewith  our  souls  are  vext, 
When  acorns  of  this  world  express 
Oaks  rooted  in  the  next." 

You  refer  to  the  vexed  and  vexing  problem 
of  the  existence  of  evil.  Could  we  get  a  view 
of  our  world  from  a  high  enough  point,  might 
we  not  possibly  discover  that  there  is  nothing 
absolutely  evil  ?  By  aid  of  the  microscope 


THE  LIFE  TO  COME.  IQI 

our  physical  vision  finds  beauty  in  mouldiest 
clods,  wonders  in  dullest  matter.  Were  our 
moral  vision  similarly  armed,  might  not  that 
look  globular  and  symmetrical  which  now  seems 
flat  and  deformed,  that  useful  which  now  seems 
obstructive,  that  attractive  which  is  now  repul- 
sive, that  beneficent  which  now  looks  malig- 
nant ?  In  the  bounded  view  we  commonly  get 
we  often  find  that  what  we  thought  a  calamity 
proves  a  benefaction.  What  we  call  evil  is 
always  a  consequence  of  a  breach  of  law.  To 
tell  your  son  that  his  toothache  is  caused  by 
the  breaking  of  a  physiological  law  by  him, 
or  his  parents,  or  his  grandparents,  will  not, 
to  be  sure,  check  the  pain  ;  nor  do  I  think 
the  toothache  a  spiritual  lever.  But  man  can 
learn  —  and  it  is  the  most  fruitful  of  his  les- 
sons —  that  law  is  absolute,  and  in  its  aim  be- 
neficent ;  that  aim  being,  along  with  growth, 
stability,  conservation,  improvement.  Which- 
ever way  we  turn  we  are  met  by  law,  and  we 
soon  perceive  that  law  is  uniform  and  irre- 
sistible, and  that  we  prosper  in  proportion  as 
we  conform  ourselves  to  its  behests.  Could  we 
always  submit  us  to  law,  physically,  morally, 
•ntellectually,  spiritually,  we  should  be  com- 
pletely prosperous.  Law  is  an  ever-active  ideal, 


IO2  BRIEF  ESSA  YS. 

above  us,  around  us,  correcting  us,  guiding  us, 
cultivating  us,  inviting  us,  exalting  us.  The 
nations  and  the  individuals  that  have  dis- 
covered and  that  obey  the  most  and  deepest 
laws  are  the  most  advanced  and  the  wisest  and 
best. 

But  why  are  not  all  laws  laid  bare  in  a  way 
that  we  could  follow  and  obey  them  all,  and 
thus  escape  suffering  ?  This  would  be  making 
the  earth  a  Methodist  heaven.  How  would 
you  like  to  do  nought  but  sing  hallelujahs  for 
seventy  years  ?  Let  us  all  be  made  perfect, 
and  we  should  have  no  goal  beyond  us,  no 
summit  above  us  to  climb  at,  no  motive  to 
movement,  and  thence  no  joy  in  mental  life, 
whose  great  spring  and  privilege  is  activity, 
aim,  projection,  progress,  and  whose  greatest 
delight  is  to  grasp  something  out  of  the  un- 
known and  add  it  to  the  known.  To  be  aye 
reaching  up  for  a  higher,  to  be  open  forever 
to  new  revelations,  to  grow  unceasingly  —  such 
is  the  birthright  of  man.  What  a  destiny  ! 
how  vast,  how  beautiful !  What  various  and 
boundless  range  of  life !  Mere  animals  have 
only  a  sensuous,  sensual  range,  and  that  mo- 
mentary and  short.  Your  favorite  ram  can 
only  see  from  one  field  to  another ;  you  can 


THE  LIFE   TO  COME.  1 03 

behold  stars  that  are  so  far  off  their  light  has 
been  thousands  of  years  in  coming  to  your 
eye  ;  and  in  thought  you  can  travel  beyond 
the  visible  spheres,  and  you  can  think  of  and 
believe  in  a  happy  endless  hereafter.  That 
men  can  so  believe  is  the  subtlest  proof  of 
their  spirituality  and  immortality.  In  a  sound 
mind  is  there  an  anticipation  that  cannot  be 
fulfilled  ? 

Don't  distress  yourself  because  "  the  big  fish 
eat  the  little  fish,  and  the  little  fish  eat  mud." 
Their  mode  of  life  and  of  death  is  accommo- 
dated to  their  sensibilities.  Mud  is  as  grate- 
ful to  the  palate  of  the  fish  that  eats  it  as 
woodcock  is  to  yours;  and  woodcock  is  after 
all  but  a  cunning  elaboration  of  mud.  But 
why  so  much  death  ?  Why  this  terrible  catas- 
trophe ?  Wherefore  die  at  all  ?  Because  with- 
out daily  removal  by  death  the  surface  of  the 
earth  would  grow  encumbered  with  matter, 
and  thus  would  get  to  be  a  moving  dung-heap. 
Besides,  death  being  "  most  in  apprehension," 
animals  escape  the  worst  of  it ;  and  as  it  is 
seen  that  men  who  have  suffered  from  this 
apprehension  meet  death  calmly  and  without 
fear,  we  may  infer  that  it  is  made  easy  to  ani- 
mals. And  to  men  it  has  been  made  fearful 


IO4  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

chiefly  by  shallow,  spurious,  extravagant,  in- 
fernal (don't  miss  the  pun)  theologies.  Death 
is  not  a  catastrophe  ;  it  is  not  a  coming  to  an 
end.  It  is  a  crisis  of  change,  a  bridge  of  tran- 
sition into  another  state.  In  the  case  of  ani- 
mals, it  is  logical  transformation  ;  in  the  case 
of  man,  it  is  logical  promotion. 

The  creative  Mightiness  and  sufficiency 
manifest  themselves  in  Law.  Law  is  perfec- 
tion. It  is  no  sign  of  "  deficiency  of  power " 
in  the  creative  mind  that  we  and  all  about 
us  are  created  imperfect.  Imperfection  is  de- 
manded for  what  constitutes  the  life  of  life, 
progression,  the  joy  of  change,  the  delight  of 
improvement,  the  exhilaration  of  ascent.  Law, 
being  perfect,  is  ever  beckoning  us  toward 
perfection.  Human  life  could  not  be  lived 
without  hope  ;  and  hope  implies  a  something 
brighter  and  better  and  happier  in  the  future, 
and  implies  therefore  a  present  imperfection 
and  a  growth  out  of  it.  Imperfection  is  the 
ground  whence  spring  up  stimulants  to  motion, 
to  activity,  to  aspiration.  Without  imperfec- 
tion there  were  no  expectation,  no  curiosity, 
no  color,  no  ecstasy,  on  earth  neither  smiles 
nor  tears,  neither  comedy  nor  tragedy. 

"  Life,  like  a  dome  of  many-colored  glass, 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  Eternity." 


THE  LIFE   TO  COME.  10$ 

Were  life  pure  white,  it  would  be  monotonous, 
tedious,  lifeless,  beside  being  invisible. 

Toward  the  end  of  your  letter  you  say,  "  Can- 
not you  write  me  a  few  lines,  comforting  and 
instructive  ? "  When,  you  wrote  these  words 
you  violated  a  law  —  that  of  prudence  ;  and  so 
you  are  visited  with  the  evil  of  these  many 
pages.  Look  out,  when  you  walk  among  rat- 
tlesnakes, not  to  break  this  law  again,  but  pro- 
vide yourself  against  "  the  serpent's  tooth " 
with  thick  leggins ;  for  the  serpent  has  as 
much  right  to  his  venom  as  man  has  to  his, 
and  ejects  it  less  malignantly. 


XVI. 

BOOKS   FOR  BOYS. 
(IN  A  LETTER  TO  A  LADY.; 

To  the  bounded  extent  that  it  can  be  granted, 
willingly  I  grant  the  request  of  your  earnest 
letter.  "  How  shall  I  educate  my  son  that  he 
may  become  a  wise  and  happy  man  ? "  this  is 
what  you  ask.  Could  any  one,  could  a  con- 
vocation of  the  wisest,  be  sure  of  teaching  you 
this  ?  A  child  is  too  vivid  an  individuality, 
that  its  coming  character  be  so  absolutely 
moulded  from  without.  Nevertheless,  for  chil- 
dren much  may  always  be  done,  in  most  cases 
very  much,  and  especially  where  there  is  will 
and  intellect  moved  by  a  love  so  deep  as  yours 
for  your  boy.  "  Tell  me  what  books  are  best 
for  him  :  there  are  so  many  books."  Many,  and 
yet  so  few  that  will  nourish  the  mind  of  a  child 
or  a  youth.  You,  perhaps,  think  that  to  one 
versed  in  books  an  answer  to  this  question  will 
be  easy.  Were  you  to  ask  me  how  most  natu- 
rally, and  therefore  healthfully,  to  feed  your  son's 
body,  I  should  say,  —  give  him  bread  (good 


BOOKS  FOR  BOYS.  1 07 

bread)  and  fruit  and  water.  Let  no  flattering 
food  touch  his  palate,  and  above  all,  no  stimu- 
lant in  meat  or  drink.  As  to  what  should  be 
set  before  his  mind,  follow  the  same  principle. 
Keep  away  from  him  all  pages  in  which  there 
is  thought  or  feeling  exaggerated,  or  forced,  or 
insidiously  attractive  ;  in  which  there  is  any- 
thing one-sided,  or  superficial,  or  delusive  — 
in  a  word,  all  pages  in  which  there  is  falsehood 
however  dressed  or  disguised.  Let  him  not 
be  cheated  by  what  he  reads.  The  food  of  his 
mind  should  be  clean  and  sweet  with  sincerity 
and  truth  —  truth  of  fact,  truth  of  principle, 
truth  of  feeling. 

But  this  you  know  :  you  wish  to  be  told  the 
names  of  the  books  whose  pages  will  be  whole- 
some for  your  boy.  Were  he  six  or  eight  years 
older,  I  could  more  readily  tell  you.  I  have 
known,  however,  of  young  readers,  not  over 
twelve  years,  who,  of  their  own  motion,  took  to 
Shakespeare.  If  your  son  has  not  done  so,  try 
him  with  "  The  Tempest,"  or  "  Twelfth  Night," 
or  "  As  You  Like  It,"  or  "  Much  Ado  About 
Nothing."  Shakespeare  is  the  best  reading  I 
know  for  minor  or  adult.  There  is  in  Shake- 
speare more  fidelity  and  fullness,  more  sense 
and  purity,  more  liveliness  and  solidity,  more 


I O8  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

truth  and  more  poetry,  than  in  any  other  writer. 
His  large  faculty  of  wonder  stretches  open  the 
minds  of  the  young,  which  are  then  filled  with 
images  of  beauty.  They  can  take  in  but  a 
part  of  him,  but  their  imaginations  are  warmed 
and  grandly  peopled.  Intellect  and  feeling  are 
both  educated  by  his  pages  as  they  will  be  by 
no  others.  If  a  boy  can  gain  admittance  to 
the  personages  of  Shakespeare,  they  are  the 
best  company  he  can  keep.  When  with  them, 
a  child  of  intelligence  and  sensibility  will  be 
fascinated,  he  knows  not  why,  Shakespeare  is 
so  full  of*  blood,  so  full  of  soul. 

Good  biographies,  well-told  lives  of  the  truly 
great,  are  excellent  reading  for  the  young.  We 
have  two  that  American  boys  should  delight 
in  —  Washington  and  Columbus,  by  Irving. 
Here,  while  storing  his  brain  with  the  doings 
and  personality  of  two  supreme  men,  the  young 
reader  has  the  gain  of  unconsciously  learning 
history.  Franklin's  autobiography  is  not  a 
book  for  the  very  young.  Plutarch  is  always 
a  resource  ;  I  wish  we  had  a  livelier,  more 
idiomatic  English  version.  A  dozen  years  ago 
an  admirable  life  of  the  Chevalier  Bayard  was 
published  in  New- York,  written  by  W.  Gilmore 
Simms.  There  are,  I  believe,  several  Lives  of 


BOOKS  FOR  BOYS,  1 09 

Sir  Philip  Sidney.  These  two  rose  to  so  rare 
a  moral  height,  that  their  characters  and  con- 
duct are  inspiring  models.  John  Forster,  of 
the  Inner  Temple,  is  the  author  of  valuable 
"  Lives  of  Eminent  British  Statesmen,"  leaders 
in  the  Great  Rebellion,  Pym,  Hampden,  Crom- 
well, Vane,  Marten.  So  closely  are  their  ca- 
reers interwoven  with  national  events,  these 
events  themselves  being  the  wrestling  of  great 
principles,  that  the  report  of  the  parts  played 
by  these  eminent  actors  is  more  reflective  than 
narrative.  But  the  period  and  the  conflict  are 
so  stirring  and  momentous,  that  an  aspiring 
tractable  boy  will  not  be  therefore  repelled. 
Besides,  boys,  when  once  mounted  on  the  nar- 
ration, have  a  ready  way  of  galloping  across 
the  reflective  field 

Hartley  Coleridge  wrote  three  volumes  about 
"Northern  Worthies,"  Andrew  Marvell,  Bent- 
ley,  Lord  Fairfax,  Lady  Anne  Clifford,  Roger 
Ascham,  Captain  Cook  and  others  —  an  in- 
structive series,  scholarly,  conscientious,  sound 
in  feeling  and  written  in  good  English.  Hartley 
had  much  of  the  fine  quality  of  his  great  father, 
S.  T.  Coleridge.  Wrangham's  "  British  Plu- 
4.arch,"  in  six  volumes,  has  some  value,  con- 
taining brief  biographies  of  one  hundred  noted 


I IO  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

Englishmen,  from  Wolsey  to  Nelson.  But  it 
wants  both  research  and  style.  The  latter 
want  would  make  it  distasteful  to  boys,  for 
these  have  a  quick  feeling  for  life  and  light  in 
the  printed  page. 

History  —  which  is  the  biography  of  nations 
—  dealing  with  organic  masses,  is  but  partially 
within  reach  of  immature  intelligence,  and  of 
histories  written  for  the  young  one  should  be 
mistrustful.  That  they  be  well  executed,  ar- 
tistic as  well  as  historic  gifts  are  needed.  Even 
then,  in  trying  to  adagt  the  account  of  com- 
plicated events  and  characters  to  the  simpli- 
city of  the  youthful  mind,  there  is  danger  that 
both  be  falsified.  Thus  to  qualify  history,  with- 
out unmanning  it,  is  next  to  impossible.  Could 
not  a  capable  boy  of  12  or  14,  who  likes  to 
read,  fasten  himself  upon  Motley's  "  Rise  of  the 
Dutch  Republic,"  and  its  continuation,  "  The 
History  of  the  United  Netherlands  "  ?  Here, 
told  with  the  animation  of  sympathy,  is  the 
story  of  a  handful  of  heroic  men  who,  through 
two  generations,  carried  on,  with  unsurpassed 
courage,  persistency  and  self-sacrifice,  against 
the  then  most  powerful  empire  on  the  globe, 
a  struggle  for  the  dearest  rights  of  manhood, 
ending  in  a  success  which  was  a  gain  to  the 


BOOKS  FOR  BOYS.  Ill 

whole  of  Christendom.  In  following  the  for- 
tunes of  the  indomitable  Hollanders,  the  reader 
hugs  to  his  heart  their  sublime  leader,  and  a 
boy  can  have  no  intimates  more  profitable, 
more  precious,  than  William  the  Silent  and 
Washington  ;  but  he  must  have  it  in  him  to 
make  them  his  friends  by  loving  and  admiring 
them. 

For  a  boy's  reading  tne  difficulty  is  to  get 
books  with  a  soul  in  them  —  books  that  one 
can  shake  hands  with,  so  real  are  they  and  so 
attaching.  The  same  with  his  teachers  —  one 
teacher  will  make  attractive  what  under  another 
will  be  repulsive.  As  to  what  studies  (beyond 
the  universally  necessary  for  every  educated 
man)  will  be  most  suitable  for  your  son,  that  will 
depend  on  his  individual  proclivities  ;  whether 
his  talents  be  literary  or  scientific  or  artistic ; 
whether  he  be  inwardly  impelled  to  action  or  to 
quiet  studiousness.  Men  of  action  are  mostly 
not  given  to  books  ;  and  boys,  whose  bent  is 
.  decidedly  toward  action,  will  not  be  furthered 
by  an  enforced  attention  to  reading  and  study. 
Nor  are  artists  apt  to  be  fond  of  the  printed 
page  ;  their  business  is  to  express,  to  give  out, 
not  to  absorb  from  others.  The  three  or  four 
most  distinguished  artists  I  know  read  little. 
In  the  school-books  of  boys,  who  have  plastic 


112  BRIEF  ESS  A  VS. 

gifts,  the  pages  most  used  will  be  the  blank  fly- 
leaves, which  will  be  found  covered  with  draw- 
ings and  figures.  If  your  son  has  a  well-defined 
tendency,  a  proved  inclination  for  any  partic- 
ular field  of  work  or  study,  encourage  him 
in  that.  What  a  boy  goes  at  with  love  he  will 
do  well.  The  choice  of  nature  should  always 
be  accepted. 

But  the  moral  side  —  thence  it  is  that  come 
your  deepest  anxieties.  The  hopes  that  are 
the  joy  of  a  natural  mother  are  daily  darkened 
by  thoughts  of  the  dangerous  world  your  child 
is  soon  to  enter  and  work  in.  To  the  maternal 
imagination  he  is  on  the  border  of  an  ominous 
wilderness,  where  crouch  wolves  and  serpents 
ready  to  howl  and  hiss  —  where  reigns  a  lurid 
twilight  terrible  with  baited  traps  and '  masked 
pitfalls.  For  your  son  you  "  dread  youth  and 
young  manhood."  You  have  suffered  yourself, 
you  see  others  suffer  from  the  malice,  or  false- 
hood, or  coldness,  or  rapacity  of  those  around 
them.  But  within  you  was  an  inner  energy  be- 
fore which  evil  slank  away  and  danger  quailed.' 
A  triumphant  mother,  you  have  brought  your 
child  through  twelve  years  which  you  almost 
shudder  to  look  back  upon.  Has  not  he  a 
manful  share  of  this  inward  power  for  self- 
protection  ?  Has  he  not  that  in  him  through 


BOOKS  FOR  BOYS.  113 

which  you  can  make  him  feel  so  intense  a  self- 
respect,  that  he  shall  be  able  to  walk  through 
temptation  and  corruption  unstained  and  un- 
bowed ?  It  is  a  something  higher  than  pride, 
stronger  than  self-reliance,  this  feeling  of  thor- 
ough self-respect.  It  is  a  soul-energy,  which 
masters  the  whole  being  for  its  good,  which 
watches  with  a  vigilance  to  which  even  that 
of  dutiful  mothers  is  drowsiness.  It  is  the 
sense  of  duty  and  the  sense  of  honor  held  in 
hand  by  the  divine  individuality  within.  Make 
your  son  keenly  aware  of  this  pure  lofty  self, 
with  its  tutelary  authority.  Make  him  con- 
scious that  always,  everywhere,  in  all  cases,  in 
every  emergency,  trial,  solicitation,  he  carries 
within  him  an  inseparable  angel,  to  warn,  shield, 
and  rescue  him ;  make  him  really  know  this,  and 
you  may  loosen  "your  mother's  arms  around 
him."  He  hears  a  voice  surer,  more  awaken- 
ing, more  commanding,  aye,  even  more  puri- 
fying than  a  "  mother's  whispers."  You  would 
like  him  to  have  friends ;  these  are  good  for 
him  to  have.  You  would  like  to  be  ever  so 
near  him,  as  to  be  yourself  his  never-failing 
friend  ;  this  were  good.  But  all  this  is  naught 
to  making  himself  his  friend.  All  men  may 
be  helped  by  friends  ;  we  all  can  and  should 
8 


1 1 4  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

help  one  another  ;  but  finally,  no  one  can  save 
a  man  but  himself;  and  he  or  she  who  makes 
him  fully  aware  of  this  is  his  best  friend  out- 
side of  himself.  Out  of  your  own  strong  warm 
heart  teach  your  son  to  value  himself;  not 
from  pride  or  ambition  or  through  self-com- 
parison with  others,  but  through  a  clear  over- 
powering sense  of  personal  responsibility,  re- 
sponsibility to  his  higher  self;  teach  him  this, 
and  you  "  put  upon  him  plate-armor  which  shall 
shield  him,"  not  from  all  suffering  and  sorrow 
on  this  temporary  earth,  where  our  chief  busi- 
ness should  be  to  better  ourselves  spiritually 
—  there  are  sorrows  and  sufferings  that  are 
purifying  and  invigorating  —  but  from  harm 
from  without.  Thus  will  be  averted  or  neu- 
tralized the  hostile  influences  that  still  ply 
around  a  young  man,  ever  ready  to  assail  him. 
You  do  a  high  duty  in  getting  the  best  teachers 
you  can  for  your  son,  in  teaching  him  your- 
self; but  his  best  teacher  is  himself.  All  his 
life,  should  he  live  to  a  hundred,  should  be 
education,  and  the  best  of  it  self-education. 
But  I  must  close.  What  I  have  here  set  down, 
although  so  fragmentary  and  insufficient,  makes 
a  long  letter  ;  if  you  get  from  it  a  hint  or  two, 
or  a  corroborating  breath  of  sympathy,  it  will 
not  have  been  written  in  vain. 


XVII. 

FREDERICK   WILLIAM   ROBERTSON. 

I  WOULD  pay  my  share  of  tribute  to  the 
character,  qualities,  and  doings  of  a  man  who 
in  the  past  few  years  has  become  dear  to  very 
many  far  beyond  the  precincts  of  his  parish 
in  Brighton,  England,  where,  in  1853,  he  died 
at  the  early  age  of  thirty-seven. 

Men  there  are  with  such  fullness  of  the 
higher  life  in  their  brains  that  they  overflow 
procreatively  upon  their  fellows.  Of  this  chosen 
few  was  Robertson,  one  of  those  deep,  pure, 
abundant  human  springs  that,  at  far  intervals 
along  our  track,  gush  up  strong  and  clear, 
where  all  may  drink  and  be  slaked,  the  laborer 
and  the  lord,  the  scholar  and  the  artisan,  man 
and  woman.  The  depth  and  beauty  and  lim- 
pidity and,  I  will  add,  the  practicality,  of 
Robertson's  teaching  all  come  from  its  spiritu- 
ality. Few  are  as  intelligent  as  he  ;  and  so 
spiritually-minded  I  know,  in  our  generation, 
of  no  man  who  has  been  in  the  public  eye. 
He  was  a  many-sided  man,  morally  and  intel- 


II 6  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

lectually.  Had  he  not  been  what  he  became, 
—  a  light  such  as  shone  from  no  other  pulpit 
within  the  British  realm,  —  he  might  have 
made  himself  an  influential  parliamentary  ora- 
tor, or  a  far-eyed  military  leader,  foremost  in 
the  advance,  or  a  brilliant  scientific  expounder. 
Into  a  close  tissue  were  woven  threads  various, 
rich,  elastic,  to  give  strength  and  beauty  to 
the  vocation  which  his  father,  with  a  wise  in- 
stinct, chose  for  him. 

The  ruling  principle  of  Robertson's  life  was 
dutifulness.  At  the  command  of  this  he  sacri- 
ficed his  preference  for  the  army  to  submit 
him  to  the  preference  of  his  father.  Having 
done  so,  he  threw  the  whole  of  his  rare  energies 
into  the  work  of  qualification.  One  of  the 
first  of  his  self-imposed  tasks  was,  to  imbue 
himself  with  the  New  Testament ;  and  this 
task  he  set  about  with  so  earnest  a  will  that 
in  a  short  time  he  had  the  whole  by  heart,  the 
Greek  as  well  as  the  English.  The  qualities 
requisite  to  make  a  clergyman  what  he  should 
be,  he  enumerates  in  the  ninth  lecture  on  St.; 
Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians :  "  Great 
powers  of  sympathy  ;  a  mind  masculine  in  its 
strength,  feminine  in  its  tenderness  ;  humble- 
ness ;  wisdom  to  direct ;  that  knowledge  of 


FREDERICK  WILLIAM  ROBERTSON.       1 1/ 

the  world  which  the  Bible  calls  the  wisdom  of 
the  serpent ;  and  that  knowledge  of  evil  which 
comes  rather  from  repulsion  from  it  than  from 
perspnal  contact  with  it."  A  conscientious 
man,  with  this  ideal  of  his  life-work,  would 
not  have  easy  years.  To  such  a  one  the  car- 
dinal question,  what  is  truth  ?  would  press  ur- 
gently. Ceaselessly  disturbed  by  discontent 
with  himself,  Robertson  at  times  would  ex- 
claim, "  I  am  nothing  but  a  stump-orator." 
Seeing  the  crowds  that  choked  his  church, 
Sunday  after  Sunday,  and  the  breathless  at- 
tention he  constrained  them  to,  he  would,  in 
moments  of  over-anxious  self-examination,  re- 
proach himself  with  drawing  and  holding  this 
throng  through  the  mere  gifts  of  the  platform- 
speaker  ;  whereas  into  these  discourses  he  so 
poured  his  life,  past  and  present,  that,  as  one 
of  his  intimate  friends,  Lady  Byron,  said  of  him, 
"  he  was  sowing  himself  beyond  his  strength." 
In  the  pulpit  he  spoke  out,  as  in  his  daily 
doings  he  strove  to  act  out,  what  at  the  close 
of  the  great  sermon  on  "Caiaphas'  view  of 
Christian  Sacrifice"  he  lays  down  as  the  true 
human  life  :  "  Life  is  elevation  of  soul  —  noble- 
ness —  divine  character.  The  spirit  of  Caiaphas 
was  death :  to  receive  all  and  give  nothing  ; 


1 1 8  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

to  sacrifice  others  to  himself.  The  spirit  of 
Christ  was  life :  to  give  and  not  receive  ;  to 
be  sacrificed,  and  not  to  sacrifice.  Hear  Him 
again  —  He  that  loseth  his  life,  the  same  shall 
find  it.  That  is  life  :  the  spirit  of  losing  all 
for  Love's  sake.  That  is  the  soul's  life,  which 
alone  is  blessedness  and  heaven."  Ever  is 
this  one  of  his  inspiring  themes.  In  the  beau- 
tiful discourse  in  the  same  volume  (the  first) 
on  the  new  commandment  of  Love  to  one  an- 
other, he  thus  comments  on  the  mocking  speech, 
He  saved  others,  himself  he  cannot  save :  "  Un- 
consciously these  enemies  were  enunciating 
the  very  principle  of  Christianity,  the  grand 
kw  of  all  existence,  that  only  by  losing  self 
can  you  save  others  ;  that  only  by  giving  life 
you  can  bless." 

One  of  Robertson's  friends  said,  "  His  life 
is  in  his  sermons."  That  the  sermons  were 
the  fruit  of  his  life,  of  his  inmost  movement, 
that  in  them  he  exhibited  what  he  was  and 
what  he  strove  to  be,  —  to  this  was  due  their 
sustained  thrilling  power  over  his  weekly  hear- 
ers, and  to  this  too,  is  due  that  we,  his  readers, 
are  by  them  so  warmed,  so  uplifted.  Nowhere 
is  there  a  trace  of  sentimentality,  of  feeling  as- 
sumed or  super-subtleized  or  thinly  expanded  ; 


FREDERICK  WILLIAM  ROBERTSON.        119 

nowhere  any  ostentation  of  intellectuality,  of 
dialectic  gymnastics.  He  is  always  cordial, 
always  in  earnest.  His  sermons  are  aglow 
with  a  large  lucent  soul :  they  pulsate  with 
spiritual  life  :  they  are  mellow  with  the  finest 
juice  of  humanity.  Thence  are  they  so  deeply, 
so  uniquely  attractive.  The  life  written  in 
these  great  discourses  is  the  literary  oratorical 
embodiment  of  the  searchings  and  the  medi- 
tations, the  bafflings  and  the  aspirations,  of 
his  daily,  hourly,  unwritten  life,  —  the  projec- 
tion of  his  luminous  personality  into  public 
prominence.  In  Robertson  there  was  no  vicious 
dualism  :  he  never  seemed  what  he  was  not. 
His  preaching  had  its  roots  in  his  individual 
strivings  after  a  better  practice  ;  and  when  his 
words  grow  gorgeous  and  tremulous  in  delinea- 
ting possible  blessedness,  they  rise  on  the 
wings  of  a  healthful  imagination,  not  on  the 
bubbles  of  a  wordy  redundance. 

A  mind  so  progressive,  eager,  susceptible, 
would  be  especially  sensitive  to  the  winds  of 
doctrine  which,  at  the  period  of  Robertson's 
entrance  into  the  Church,  were  blowing  in 
strong  counter-currents  over  the  sea  of  Eng- 
lish theology.  The  Tractarians  were  in  the  full 
aiomentum  of  their  retrogressive  movement. 


I2O  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

For  a  while  he  rolled  somewhat  unsteadily 
amid  the  conflicting  waves  of  controversy,  and 
it  was  only  after  his  settlement  in  Brighton, 
that  he  became  so  clear  and  firm  in  his  con- 
victions as  to  sail  right  onward  with  confidence 
and  steady  self-reliance.  Of  the  five  volumes 
of  sermons,  —  all  preached  at  Brighton  in  the 
last  six  years  of  his  life,  —  the  chief  burthen 
is,  CHRISTIANITY  is  A  LIFE,  NOT  A  CREED.  His 
"  Master  "  was  his  ever  present  exemplar ;  and 
nowhere  is  the  spirituality  of  that  sublime 
lonely  life  set  forth  more  vividly. 

"  To  saturate  life  with  God,  and  the  world 
with  Heaven,  that  is  the  genius  of  Chris- 
tianity." "  God  is  the  father  of  the  whole  hu- 
man race,  and  not  of  a  mere  section  of  it :  a 
divine  spirit  is  the  source  of  all  goodness  in 
man  :  the  righteousness  acceptable  in  his 
sight  is  not  ceremonial,  but  moral,  goodness  : 
the  only  principle  which  reconciles  the  soul  to 
God,  making  it  one  with  God,  is  self-sacrifice  : 
this  is  the  essence  of  Christianity."  "  The  first 
lesson  of  Christianity  is  this,  —  Be  true ;  and 
the  second  this,  —  Be  true  ;  and  the  third  this, 
—  Be  true."  "  Christ's  rule  was,  if  any  man 
will  do  his  will.  A  blessed  rule,  a  plain  and 
simple.  Whatever  else  may  be  wrong,  it  must 


FREDERICK  WILLIAM  ROBERTSON.       121 

be  right  to  be  pure,  to  be  just  and  tender,  and 
merciful  and  honest.  It  must  be  right  to  love, 
and  to  deny  one's  self.  Let  him  do  the  will 
and  he  shall  know.  Observe ;  men  begin  the 
other  way.  They  say,  if  I  could  but  believe, 
then  I  would  make  my  life  true.  If  I  could 
but  be  sure  what  is  truth,  then  I  would  set  to 
work  to  live  in  earnest  No  ;  God  says,  Act  — 
make  the  life  true,  and  then  you  will  be  able 
to  believe  :  Live  in  earnest,  and  you  will  know 
the  answer  to  what  is  truth."  "  The  Pharisees 
could  conceive  no  goodness  free,  but  only  that 
which  is  produced  by  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, —  law  goodness,  law  righteousness  :  to 
dread  God,  not  to  love  and  trust  Him,  was  their 
conception  of  religion.  And  this,  indeed,  is 
the  ordinary  conception  of  religion."  Expan- 
sions of  these  and  similar  central  sentiments 
are,  for  the  most  part,  the  substance  of  Robert- 
son's discourses.  Mysteries  he  makes  trans- 
parent by  the  solvent  of  common  sense, — 
common  sense,  as  so  happily  defined  by  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  in  a  conversation  with 
Rogers,  —  "a  good  understanding  modulated 
by  a  good  heart."  The  heart  of  Robertson 
was  a  deep  spring  of  sympathies,  wrought 
oy  a  strong  compact  intellect  into  showers, 


122  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

through  which  there  sparkled  so  divine  a  light 
that  it  entranced,  while  warming  and  refresh- 
ing, the  hearts  of  his  hearers.  And  his  style 
partakes  of  the  power  and  beauty  of  this  union. 
It  has  that  throbbing  vivacity,  that  elastic  un- 
dulation, which  style  may  have  when  thought 
has  been  steeped  in  the  riches  of  a  soul. 

Never  did  man  more  faithfully  follow  his 
own  great  primary  precept  —  Be  true.  He 
was  true  to  all  his  duties,  true  to  his  fellow 
men  in  every  relation,  true  to  himself.  Man- 
liness, in  the  heartiest  meaning  of  the  word, 
he  had.  To  him  may  be  applied  what  Napo- 
leon said  after  his  interview  with  Goethe, — 
"There  you  have  a  man"  The  blessing  he 
was  to  so  many  near  and  around  him  has  not 
ceased  with  his  life  on  earth :  we  feel  it  through 
the  record  left  of  his  speech  and  his  deeds. 
The  glowing  words  he  uses  to  describe  St. 
Paul  might  serve  for  his  own  epitaph :  "  A 
heart,  a  brain,  and  a  soul  of  fire :  all  his  life 
a  suppressed  volcano :  his  acts,  '  living  things 
with  hands  and  feet : '  his  words,  '  half  bat- 
tles.'" 


XVIII. 

GOETHE'S  FAUST. 

THE  poet  must  make  himself  one  with  his 
subject,  which  then  comes  from  him  new-barn, 
steeped  in  the  juice  of  his  own  being.  This  he 
can  only  do  through  intense  sympathy  ;  and 
thence,  to  reproduce  a  large  deep  subject  (a 
tragedy  of  Hamlet  or  of  Lear)  the  poet  must 
have  a  large  deep  nature.  His  heart  must 
throb  with  the  heart  of  what  he  would  create, 
else  he  can  not  create  it.  Into  Faust,  as  his 
masterpiece  and  the  longest  of  his  poetic  works, 
Goethe  put  more  of  himself  than  into  any  other. 
The  principles  he  had  thought  out ;  the  knowl- 
edge he  had  ripened  ;  the  temptations,  joys,  tri- 
als, vexations,  he  had  undergone,  his  aspirations 
and  his  disappointments  —  all  is  in  Faust ;  the 
depths  of  his  mind,  the  woes  of  his  heart  —  all 
transfigured  by  poetry.  Never  did  poet,  saving 
Dante,  put  so  much  of  himself  into  a  single 
poem,  nor  was  there  ever  poet,  saving  Shake- 
speare, who  had  so  much  to  put  in. 

When   Coleridge    said    that    the   Faust    of 


124  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

Goethe  wants  causation,  he  said  what  is  true ; 
but  when  he  meant  this  as  a  reproach,  it  seems 
to  me  he  was  mistaken.  Faust  is  not,  and  is 
not  called,  a  drama.  The  title-page  reads, 
"  Faust,  a  Tragedy."  It  is  a  lyrical  tragedy. 
Goethe's  organization  was  lyrical,  not  dramatic. 
His  aesthetic  forte  was  the  utterance  of  feeling 
in  song,  ballad,  elegy,  narrative,  or  dialogue  ; 
and  when,  in  order  to  have  scope  for  character- 
ization, in  which  he  was  a  master,  he  chose 
dialogue,  the  production  was  dramatic  in  form, 
more  than  in  essence.  It  would  have  no  dra- 
matic shock  of  incidents,  no  rapid  material 
progression,  no  stirring  muscular  movement, 
no  shifting  interaction  of  hostile  personages, 
but  would  give  embodiment  to  an  interplay 
of  strong  or  tender  emotion,  to  inward  strug- 
gles, to  overflow  of  passionate  feeling,  wrought 
into  scenes  vivid  and  varied  and  stamped  with 
beauty  of  form.  Such  are  "Iphigenia"  and 
"  Tasso,"  and  even  "  Egmont "  —  all  dramas  in 
outward  shape,  —  lyric  expansions  in  dialogue. 
Goethe  was  warned  against  Faust  as  a  sub- 
ject that  has  already  been  often  treated,  and 
with  small  results.  Wise  monitors  !  As  if  to 
a  poet  the  subject  were  anything  more  than  a 
mould,  and  a  pliable,  expansible  mould,  into 


GOETHE'S  FAUST.  12$ 

which  to  pour  himself.  His  predecessors  had 
failed,  because  they  had  little  or  nothing  to  put 
into  the  mould.  Faust,  as  being  a  popular  le- 
gend, and  a  popular  legend  sprung  out  of  the 
depths  of  the  human  soul,  lent  itself  with  ease 
to  genuinely  poetic  treatment,  and  especially  to 
a  poet  of  such  manifold  endowment  as  Goethe, 
whose  lyrical  predilections,  too,  had  here,  in 
the  legendary  character  of  the  theme,  a  clear 
field  for  indulgence.  There  was  no  need  to 
bind  the  scenes  in  dramatic  continuity,  in  log- 
ical necessity :  they  could  be  kept  close  enough 
together  by  the  flowing  reins  of  emotional  con- 
trol, held  in  hand  by  the  boldest  artistic  inven- 
tion. From  its  compass  and  free  privileges,  the 
subject  was  particularly  attractive  to  Goethe, 
who  clung  to  it  all  his  life,  taking  it  up  in  early 
manhood  and  completing  it  in  his  eighty-sec- 
ond year. 

Goethe  had  such  facility  of  expression  that 
he  was  only  saved  from  running  into  verbiage 
by  his  strong  and  exacting  intellect,  and  he 
had  such  fullness  of  sensibility  that  he  was  only 
saved  from  sentimentalism  by  his  sound  ethic 
as  well  as  aesthetic  feeling.  But  this  rare  com- 
bination and  balance  of  high  qualities  give  a 
precision  and  compactness  to  his  expression, 


1 26  BRIEF  ESSA  YS. 

and  a  closeness  to  the  texture  of  his  thought, 
which  make  him  in  his  best  pages  —  and  his 
best  pages  count  by  thousands — an  author 
difficult  to  translate ;  and,  of  all  his  poems, 
Faust  is  the  most  difficult.  And  yet  Faust 
must  be  translated.  The  light  therein  must 
not  be  hidden  away  from  all  the  rest  of  the 
reading  world  under  the  wrappage  of  a  single 
language.  And  we  can  say,  without  being 
chargeable  with  American  brag,  that  the  two 
best  translations  of  Faust  into  English  have 
been  made  by  two  of  our  countrymen,  Mr.  C. 
T.  Brooks,  and  Mr.  Bayard  Taylor, 

Christianity,  civilization,  progress,  have  been, 
and  are  now  more  than  ever,  nourished  by 
translations.  What  if  Isaiah  and  Job  and  Da- 
vid do  lose  somewhat  of  their  original  poetic 
sheen  in  the  transit  from  Hebrew  into  English. 
Without  translation  we  should  have  had  no 
Bible  —  not  a  chapter.  What  do  we  of  this  re- 
mote generation  not  owe  to  the  translators  of 
Plato  and  Plutarch  ?  As  the  nations  of  Chris- 
tendom grow  more  and  more  united,  the  more 
is  the  need,  the  greater  the  service,  of  transla- 
tion for  the  furtherance  of  science,  literature, 
advancement,  freedom.  Goethe  is  one  of  the 
master  minds  of  the  world.  His  sixty  volumes 


GOETHE'S  FAUST. 

are  in  themselves  a  literature ;  his  pages  are 
full  of  wisdom  and  light ;  and,  of  all  his  beau- 
tiful creations,  Faust  is  the  most  original  and 
the  most  commanding. 

Goethe  declares  that  "  he  who  cannot  get 
it  into  his  head  that  spirit  and  matter,  soul 
and  body,  thought  and  extension,  or,  as  a  late 
French  writer  expresses  it,  will  and  movement, 
were,  are,  and  ever  will  be  the  necessary  double 
ingredients  of  the  Universe,  which  demand  for 
themselves  equal  rights,  and  therefore  both  to- 
gether may  be  looked  upon  as  representatives 
of  God  —  that  man  should  give  up  all  attempt  to 
be  a  thinker,  and  give  all  his  days  to  the  com- 
mon noisy  business  of  the  world."  Goethe's 
spirituality  admitted  matter  to  an  equal  alli- 
ance :  he  would  not  therefore  have  given  assent 
to  Joubert's  position :  "  To  create  the  world  a 
grain  of  matter  sufficed  ;  for  all  that  we  see, 
this  mass  which  affrights  us,  is  nothing  but  a 
grain  which  the  Eternal  has  created  and  set  to 
work." 

In  the  second  part  of  Faust  there  might  be, 
along  with  the  purification  through  outward 
activity,  an  inly-originating  and  inly-working 
emotion,  tending  to  cleanse  and  uplift  the 
whole  man  and  his  doings,  giving  to  his  activi- 


128  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

ties  larger  scope  and  deeper  meaning.  This 
inward  self-stirred  spiritual  source  was  not  so 
deep  in  Goethe  as  to  play  in  his  greatest  crea- 
tion a  controlling  part.  Faust  sweeps  through 
a  wide  circle,  but  here  was  a  segment  of  it 
which  he  passed  over,  without  getting  from  it 
all  the  light  it  is  capable  of  imparting. 

The  product  of  a  nature  so  rich,  thoughtful, 
and  true,  Faust  involves  sound  moral  lessons. 
Through  the  depth  and  wisdom  of  his  writings 
Goethe  has  done  much  to  condemn  and  correct 
the  very  aberrations  himself  fell  into.  As  poet- 
thinker,  he  did  more  than  any  man  of  his  age 
to  clear  the  general  atmosphere. 


XIX. 

SHELLEY. 

IF  to  have  the  power  to  lift  his  theme  into 
a  light  so  fresh,  so  penetrating,  that  it  reveals 
sides,  qualities,  relations,  never  presented  be- 
fore, —  a  light  self-kindled  in  the  lifter's  soul ; 
if  to  be  full  of  thoughts,  images,  conceptions, 
as  new  as  beautiful,  and  so  full  of  them  that 
they  are  irresistibly  urgent  for  rhythmical  ut- 
terance, and  when  uttered  give  a  new  delight 
and  a  new  virtue  to  the  capable  reader  ;  if  to 
exalt  the  earthly  that  it  shall  look  heavenly, 
to  irradiate  the  common  that  it  shall  glisten 
with  unsuspected  life,  to  make  the  motions  of 
daily  being  converge  to  a  focus  so  lastingly 
brilliant  that  men's  eyes  are  drawn  to  it 
through  the  ages,  their  vision  being  thereby 
purged  and  strengthened  ;  if  to  be  and  do  all 
this  is  to  be  a  poet,  Shelley  takes  rank  among 
the  foremost  of  those  whose  function  it  is  to 
enkindle  and  refine  and  elevate  and  liberate 
their  fellow- men.  Rays  shot  from  a  central 
core,  ever  aflame  with  love  and  aspiration, 
9 


I3O  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

are  the  lines  of  Shelley.  Than  his  poems 
more  genuine  emanations  from  a  poet's  inmost 
were  never  penned.  Through  them  throbs  a 
great  heart,  the  heart  of  an  earnest,  unselfish, 
loving  man  ;  and  this  manly  throb  gives  sub- 
stance and  an  added  brilliancy  to  their  poetic 
sparkle. 

In  literature  to  create  is  to  breathe  a  soul 
into  your  theme.  Divest  "  Hamlet  "  of  Shake- 
speare, and  it  is  a  vulgar  tale  of  lusts  clotted 
with  blood.  Take  the  poetry  out  of  "  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,"  and  Theseus  and 
Hypollita  and  Hermia  and  their  fellows  are 
graceless  egotists,  whose  talk  one  would  not 
tolerate  for  five  minutes ;  and  Oberon  and 
Titania  and  Puck,  those  everlasting  most  vi- 
vacious of  realities,  would  suddenly  sink  out 
of  sight  into  the  earth,  as  being  now  more 
valueless  than  the  weeds  which  deform  its  sur- 
face, for  these  have  roots  and  a  life  in  them. 
Ask  the  first  man  you  meet  what  he  has  to 
say  of  the  West  Wind.  The  liveliest  answer 
you  would  get  would  be  one  like  that  of  the 
lady  who,  when  her  companion  uttered  his  de- 
light at  the  frisking  play  of  lambs  in  a  field, 
said,  she  preferred  them  with  mint  sauce.  A 
clever  man  and  a  ready  might,  without  shame, 
have  naught  to  say  of  the  West  Wind.  Now 


SHELLEY.  131 

read  Shelley's  ode,  to  learn  what  a  marvel- 
ously  poetical  theme  it  may  be  made  by  a 
great  poet  who  puts  himself  into  it  in  one  of 
his  best  moods. 

The  "  Ode  to  the  West  Wind  "  is  especially 
characteristic  of  Shelley,  because  it  is  so  pure- 
ly poetical ;  for  when  Shelley  is  most  himself, 
his  mind  is  most  creative,  he  being  essen- 
tially, predominantly,  a  poet.  And  the  poet  is 
most  a  poet  when  he-  can  spin  a  lasting  web 
out  of  his  own  brain.  This  Ode  is  further- 
more characteristic  of  Shelley  because  it  is  so 
self-evolved,  thought  awakening  thought  in- 
terminably within  him,  imagination  then  waft- 
ing him  from  peak  to  peak  of  multitudinous 
sunlit  creation.  This  rapid  procreative  energy 
is  a  mark  of  the  highest  mental  resource,  in- 
volving intellectual  originality  with  swift  and 
wide  imaginative  swing.  Note,  in  the  follow- 
ing passage,  how  image  shoots  out  of  image, 
impromptu  fertility  lavishing  poetic  wealth, 
and  with  a  logical  fitness  that  keeps  the  shift- 
ing stream  firmly  bordered.  Every  comma  is 
a  momentary  pause  before  a  new  bound. 

"  O  thou 

Who  chariotest  to  their  dark  wintry  bed 

The  winged  seeds,  where  they  lie  cold  and  low, 

Each  like  a  corpse  within  its  grave,  until 


132  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

Thine  azure  sister  of  the  spring  shall  blow 
Her  clarion  o'er  the  dreaming  earth,  and  fill 
(Driving  sweet  buds  like  flocks  to  feed  in  air) 
With  living  hues  and  odors  plain  and  hill." 

Each  of  the  five  stanzas  furnishes  similar 
poetically  cumulative  passages,  passages  piled 
up  by  an  insatiate  mental  liveliness,  ever  feed- 
ing itself  on  fresh  beauties  of  its  own  beget- 
ting. Again,  this  poem  is  characteristic  because 
through  its  musical  tenderness  there  sounds 
an  undertone  of  sadness  ;  for  to  Shelley  might 
be  applied  his  own  lines  to  the  moon  :  — 

"  Art  thou  pale  for  weariness 
Of  climbing  heaven,  and  gazing  on  the  earth  ; 
Wandering  companionless 
Among  the  stars  that  have  a  different  birth  ?  " 

The  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind"  is  not  es- 
pecially characteristic  of  Shelley  because  of 
the  fineness  of  the  mental  fibre  transparent 
in  it,  for  that  is  visible  in  all  that  he  wrote. 
One  of  the  most  richly  endowed  of  men,  Shel- 
ley was  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  most  ex- 
quisitely organized.  His  sensibilities  kept  his 
life  in  a  frequent  tremor,  and  at  times,  when 
his  imagination  fastened  upon  images  ol  terror, 
(and  he  was  liable  to  morbid  moods  when  such 
images  were  most  congenial)  his  agony  almost 
convulsed  him.  When  a  negotiation  was  opened 


SHELLEY.  133 

with  the  manager  of  Covent  Garden  theatre 
to  get  "  The  Cenci "  performed,  with  Miss 
O'Neil  as  Beatrice,  Shelley  exclaimed,  "  God 
forbid  that  I  should  see  her  play  it !  it  would 
tear  my  nerves  to  pieces."  This  susceptibility 
made  him  recoil  from  the  gross  and  robust  and 
even  from  the  palpable,  while  his  intellectual 
subtlety,  and  his  keen  sense  of  the  beautiful, 
ever  tempted  him  into  visionary  fields,  where 
he  fashioned  creatures  who  were  largely  ab- 
solved from  the  cumbersome  conditions  of 
earthly  being.  In  a  letter  to  one  of  his  friends, 
Mr.  Gisbourne,  he  says,  speaking  of  "  Epipsy- 
chidion " :  "  As  to  real  flesh  and  blood,  you 
know  that  I  do  not  deal  in  those  articles  ;  you 
might  as  well  go  to  a  gin-shop  for  a  leg  of 
mutton  as  expect  anything  human  or  earthly 
from  me."  And  that  delicate  resplendent  crea- 
tion, "  The  Witch  of  Atlas,"  is  prefaced  with 
six  stanzas  addressed  to  his  wife,  "  on  her  ob- 
jecting to  the  following  poem,  upon  the  score 
of  its  containing  no  human  interest." 

This  objection  cannot  be  made  to  "  Prome- 
theus Unbound."  In  conception,  Shelley's  Pro- 
metheus is  grandly,  intensely,  human  :  in  the 
execution  its  author  yields  to  his  overmaster- 
ing ethereal  bent,  to  his  delight  in  expanding 


134  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

towards  the  unreal.  By  virtue  of  imaginative 
force  Shelley  holds  his  visionary  figures  firmly 
before  his  mind :  to  him  they  are  distinct  and 
lively,  because  the  filaments  that  hold  them 
issue  from  his  own  brain.  But  these  fine  fila- 
ments soon  snap  in  the  reader's  mental  grasp, 
and  the  figures  float  off  into  the  impalpable. 
The  figures  are  but  phantasms  ;  whereas  it  is 
only  personages,  humanly  conditioned,  that  the 
reader  can  clasp  long  and  close  enough  to  feel 
and  love  them.  In  firm,  pulse-thridded  bodies 
the  Divine  Artist  incarnates  the  ideas  where- 
with He  wishes  to  rejoice  man's  sense  of  the 
beautiful.  Shelley's  incarnations  lack  the  earth- 
ly element :  he  had  too  much  nerve  and  not 
enough  muscle.  Hence  in  his  "  Prometheus 
Unbound,"  stamped  as  it  is  with  greatness, 
the  conception  is  not  vividly  accomplished. 
The  Gods  and  Spirits  and  Impersonations 
that  play  around  Prometheus  have  not  enough 
red  blood  in  their  arteries.  It  is  not  a  drama 
(Shelley  entitles  it  a  lyrical  drama),  but  a 
dramatic  lyric ;  that  is,  a  self-rapt  effusion, 
a  soliloquy  in  dialogue  rather  than  the  ob- 
jective, organic  structure,  whose  essence  is 
characterization,  which  a  drama  should  prop- 
erly be.  The  age  was  a  lyrical  age,  so  volcanic 


SHELLEY.  135 

with   change,   with    passion,   with    aspiration, 
were  the  tempers  and  thoughts  of  men. 

In  "The  Cenci,"  Shelley  plants  himself  firmly 
upon  the  earth,  and  weaves  with  the  tremulous 
chords  of  human  feeling,  pages  of  passion  and 
power  that  fill  the  reader  with  admiration.  But 
the  story  is  so  revolting  that  the  reader's  im- 
agination refuses  to  harbor  it,  and  the  protago- 
nist of  the  drama  is  a  monster  so  hideous  as 
to  be  far  out  of  the  pale  of  human  sympathy. 
Cenci,  the  father  and  husband,  is  a  fiend,  not 
a  man  :  his  doings  spring  not  from  human 
motives,  they  are  the  contortions  of  a  blase 
demon.  Beside  him  lago  and  Edmund  are 
cherubs.  To  be  sure,  he  was  a  reality,  a  re- 
ality engendered  by  the  union  of  vice  with 
despotism,  of  bestiality  with  superstition,  which 
Rome  presented  (and  only  Rome  could  pre- 
sent) towards  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
But  even  the  genius  of  Shelley  cannot  make 
Francesco  Cenci  a  poetic  reality,  cannot  make 
his  criminal  heart  radiate  a  generic  light,  so 
far  beneath  the  measure  of  the  human  scale 
is  his  moral  deformity.  So  overwhelming  are 
ihe  deeds  and  personality  of  Cenci  that  the 
other  personages  are  swamped  in  the  mire  of 
inhumanity  through  which  he  strides.  All  are 


136  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

so  pale  in  the  lurid  glare  of  his  demoniacal 
will,  that  there  is  little  room  for  characteriza- 
tion, little  for  dramatic  collision,  and  none  for 
variety.  Shelley  has  made  the  most  of  a  sub- 
ject to  which  he  was  drawn  by  that  imagina- 
tive delight  in  excess  which  was  one  of  his 
characteristics,  and  which,  springing  in  him 
out  of  his  very  susceptibility  to  the  beautiful, 
was  liable  to  efface  the  beautiful  with  its  de- 
vouring flame.  In  the  preface  to  "  The  Cenci  " 
he  says  :  "  The  person  who  would  treat  such 
a  subject  must  increase  the  ideal,  and  diminish 
the  actual  horror  of  the  events,  so  that  the 
pleasure  which  arises  from  the  poetry  which 
exists  in  these  tempestuous  sufferings  and 
crimes  may  mitigate  the  pain  of  the  contem- 
plation of  the  moral  deformity  from  which  they 
spring."  But  not  even  his  rare  poetic  gift  and 
thoughtful  art  can  subdue  the  horror,  but  it 
will  envelop  the  reader  and  the  personages  in 
unpoetic  gloom. 

The  Poems  —  now  acknowledged  to  be 
among  the  most  original  and  poetical  in  our 
language  —  that  were  published  by  Shelley 
before  "  The  Cenci,"  met  with  no  acceptance, 
and  hardly  with  recognition  ;  but  "  The  Cenci " 
was  at  least  partly  appreciated,  and  Mrs.  Shel- 


SHELLEY.  137 

ley  thought  she  saw  in  it  the  opening  of  a  new 
mine,  the  working  of  which  would  further  de- 
velop her  husband's  powers  through  the  sym- 
pathy of  the  public.  She  endeavored  to  per- 
suade him  to  repeat  an  experiment  which  had 
proved  so  successful ;  but  Shelley,  instead  of 
yielding,  wrote  "  The  Witch  of  Atlas,"  the  most 
exquisitely  ideal  and  ethereal  of  his  poems.  In 
her  note  on  "  The  Witch  of  Atlas,"  Mrs.  Shel- 
ley says :  "  But  my  persuasions  were  vain  ; 
the  mind  could  not  be  bent  from  its  natural 
inclination,  Shelley  shrank  instinctively  from 
portraying  human  passion,  with  its  mixture  of 
good  and  evil,  of  disappointment  and  disquiet. 
Such  opened  again  the  wounds  of  his  own 
heart ;  and  he  loved  to  shelter  himself  rather 
in  the  airiest  flights  of  fancy,  forgetting  love 
and  hate,  and  regret,  and  lost  hope,  in  such 
imaginations  as  borrowed  their  hues  from  sun- 
rise or  sunset,  from  the  yellow  moonshine  or 
paly  twilight,  from  the  aspect  of  the  far  ocean 
or  the  shadows  of  the  woods,  —  which  cele- 
brated the  singing  of  the  winds  among  the 
pines,  the  flow  of  a  murmuring  stream,  and 
the  thousand  harmonious  sounds  which  Nature 
creates  in  her  solitudes." 

In  my  judgment  not  "  Prometheus"  or  "The 


138  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

Cenci,"  but  "  Adonais "  is  the  masterpiece  of 
Shelley.  In  it  there  is  more  of  the  poet  Shel- 
ley, and  more  of  the  man  Shelley,  than  in  any 
other  of  his  works ;  and  the  result  is  that 
Adonais  is  the  finest  elegy  and  one  of  the  best 
poems  in  literature.  Here  we  witness  what 
lightnings  can  flash  from  the  love-enkindled 
soul  of  a  great  poet.  While  writing  the  elegy 
of  Keats,  Shelley  wrote  that  of  himself,  and 
this  half-conscious  aim  deepened  the  beauty 
and  the  pathos  of  this  transcendent  poem. 
The  four  stanzas  which  directly  relate  to  him- 
self give  the  most  brilliant  and  the  most  affect- 
ing portrait  that  was  ever  self-drawn  :  — 

"  A  pard-like  spirit,  beautiful  and  swift,  — 
Who  in  another's  fate  now  wept  his  own." 

Who  can  read  the  sudden  conclusion  of  this 
most  touching,  most  tender,  and  most  vivid 
portrait,  without  a  thrill  of  awe  ? 

In  writing  "  Adonais,"  Shelley's  best  feelings, 
admiration  of  the  admirable,  poetic,  and  with 
it,  personal  sympathy  for  his  great  young  rival, 
generous  devotion,  rightful  wrath,  were  all 
keenly  enlisted,  and  by  the  warmth  of  the  oc- 
casion, and  by  the  extraordinary  demands  made 
on  him  to  celebrate  a  poet  so  unique,  were 
fused  into  a  glow,  which,  by  the  rare  cunning 


SHELLEY.  139 

of  his  hand,  was  fluently  moulded  into  those 
pliant  lustrous  forms  which  only  shape  them- 
selves in  the  sun  of  the  most  genial  sense  of 
the  beautiful.  Throughout  all  the  fifty-five 
Spencerian  stanzas  there  is  the  most  easy  and 
graceful  and  close  and  rapid  interbraiding  of 
emotion  and  thought.  The  poet  is  in  his  best 
mood.  The  personality  of  the  theme,  with  his 
own  affections  and  sorrows,  hold  his  imagi- 
nation closely  to  its  duty.  His  cloud-cleaving 
tendency  is  controlled  to  concentrate  the  whole 
roused  man  upon  the  beloved  theme.  Through 
the  action  of  his  wrought  faculties  he  exerts, 
with  a  copiousness  even  more  lavish  than  else- 
where, the  poetic  power  of  compelling  remote 
things  into  neighborhood,  unlike,  into  simili- 
tude, scattered,  into  unity  ;  but  his  illustrations 
and  metaphors,  even  those  brought  from  the 
farthest  distances,  are  so  apt  and  lively,  that 
they  cling  to  the  thought  before  you,  making 
it  at  once  more  clear  and  more  compact.  This 
high  gift  is  used  to  put  more  life  and  charac- 
ter into  the  verse.  In  "  Adonais  "  there  is  a 
stronger,  steadier  pulse  than  in  any  other  of 
his  poems. 


XX. 

SHAKESPEARE. 

EVER  behind  appearances  sparkles  their 
mysterious  source,  appreciable  only  by  spirit- 
ual insight ;  beneath  all  human  doings  sways 
their  interior  impulse,  only  fathomable  by 
sympathy ;  behind,  beneath  these  mysterious 
sources,  these  interior  impulses,  weighing 
them,  measuring  them,  is  the  supernal  source 
and  mind  which,  in  its  perfect  purity,  repels 
the  finest  mote  of  soil,  and  in  its  plenary  mercy, 
ordains  the  purification  of  the  foulest.  To  feel 
the  spring  of  this  supreme  dominance  in  all 
movements  and  conjunctions,  is  a  prerogative 
of  man,  enjoyed  in  fullness  only  through  the 
translucent  susceptibility  of  the  highest  genial 
endowment.  Through  intuitive  cognizance  of 
eternal  law,  through  healthfullest  fellow-feeling 
with  human  desires,  through  intense  joy  in  all 
manifestations  of  life  (a  token  this  of  aesthetic 
genius),  Shakespeare,  with  unexampled  fidelity 
to  the  deep  primary  demands,  presents  pictures 
of  being,  doing,  and  suffering,  in  their  infinite 


SHAKESPEARE,  14! 

modes  and  varieties.  Like  his  own  Prospero, 
"  his  Art  is  of  such  power,"  he  controls  the 
stormiest  motions  of  the  soul,  to  play  with 
them  for  his  and  our  behoof.  His  gravest  trag- 
edies are  an  earnest  sport  with  human  passion ; 
his  lightest  comedies  are  a  playful  conflict  with 
human  will. 

The  incorporation,  through  superhuman  cre- 
ative might,  of  thought  and  will  in  organic  na- 
ture, is  the  daily  wonder,  ever  renewed  before 
our  eyes :  Idea,  purpose,  successfully,  and 
therefore  beautifully,  realized  in  sensuous  form 
and  animated  motion,  the  mysterious  marriage 
which  results  in  palpable  being,  the  great  un- 
fathomable act  of  genesis,  brought  momently 
before  us,  to  delight  and  teach,  to  unfold  and 
quicken  the  eager  faculties  of  our  finite  and  in- 
finite being  !  The  most  valid  stroke  of  creative 
might  —  if  without  arrogance  the  same  terms 
may  be  used  —  by  the  human  mind  in  the  realm 
of  literature  is  the  reproduction  out  of  itself, 
the  incorporation  of  men  who,  thus  man-made, 
shall  speak  and  do  as  God-made  men  speak  and 
do,  with  a  like  elastic  carriage,  a  like  psycholog- 
ical absolute  individuality.  To  utter  warm  clear 
sentiment  under  the  rhythmic  press  of  lyrical 
inspiration,  is  a  high  exercise  of  mental  power, 


142  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

but  higher  than  this  single  act  is  the  compound 
act  which  gives  to  the  utterance  a  broader  sig- 
nificance, a  more  definite  meaning,  by  grafting 
it  into  a  brain-projected  human  being.  There- 
by the  poetic  strain  becomes  secondary  to  a 
concrete  complex  whole,  and  from  being  the  all 
in  all  of  the  lyric,  where  it  is  the  direct  delivery 
of  the  poet,  is  subsidiary  to  a  purpose  higher 
than  a  personal  effusion,  and  fitting  its  place  as 
an  exponent  of  character,  gains  both  in  brill- 
iancy and  breadth.  Characterization,  the  crea- 
tion of  character,  which  can  only  be  fully  and 
permanently  achieved  through  the  vision  and 
grasp  of  poetic  power,  and  which  implies  a 
group  of  personages  interacting  one  on  the 
other  in  an  organic  series  of  doings,  —  charac- 
terization, in  this  aesthetic  sense,  is  the  loftiest 
literary  achievement ;  for,  in  addition  to  many 
single  literary  qualifications,  such  as  flexibility 
of  expression,  graphic  gift,  figurative  faculty, 
imaginative  intensity,  it  demands  fullness  of 
mental  endowment,  and  a  warmth  that  shall 
fuse  all  these  qualities  to  the  furtherance  of  a 
complex  artistic  end  ;  and  finally,  as  decisive 
equipment,  it  involves  an  intuitive  insight  into 
human  nature  combined  with  mimetic  facility, 
so  that  the  coordinated  union  of  the  above  gifts 


SHAKESPEARE.  143 

may  issue  in  rounded  buoyant  figures  that  shall 
move  and  speak  like  living  men,  only  with  a 
poetic  transfiguration  of  soul  through  a  poetic 
transparency  of  diction.  The  Germans  are 
right  to  call  Sterne  and  Cervantes  poets  ;  for  in 
none  of  the  epic  or  dramatic  verse  of  Christen- 
dom, outside  of  Shakespeare,  is  there  more 
plastic  poetic  fullness,  more  aesthetic  truth,  than 
in  their  immortal  masterpieces. 

To  launch  upon  the  sea  of  time  a  brain-built 
being  so  palpitating  with  soul,  so  mobile  with 
individual  life,  that  for  centuries  it  keeps  its 
freshness  and  wields  its  power  amid  the  flesh 
and  blood  lords  of  reality,  as  do  Macbeth  and 
Don  Quixote  and  my  uncle  Toby  and  FalstafF 
and  Caliban,  this  proclaims  a  kinship  with  the 
invisible  creative  mind  and  mightiness,  and  ex- 
alts all  humanity  on  the  soaring  wings  of  its 
sun-eyed  poets.  For  the  crowning  mastership 
of  characterization,  Shakespeare,  by  his  origi- 
nality, his  fidelity  to  nature,  and  his  universal- 
ity, takes  the  first  place,  being,  as  Coleridge 
with  sympathetic  insight  so  grandly  says,  a 
myriad-minded  man. 

In  this  multiplicity  of  gifts  there  is  one,  at 
once  the  subtlest  and  the  broadest  of  all,  with 
which  Shakespeare  among  poets  is  uniquely 


144  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

portioned,  and  which,  standing  him  always  in 
good  stead,  is  especially  serviceable  in  his  high 
dramatic  function  of  characterization :  I  mean 
his  sympathy  with  the  super-earthly.  Hereby, 
through  emotional  divination,  he  has  range  of 
the  peopled  world  of  the  invisible.  By  all  the 
abler  among  his  critics  and  commentators,  this 
gift  has  been  noted  ;  but  has  it  been  duly  no- 
ted ?  Much  more  is  it  than  one  superadded 
faculty  which  enables  Shakespeare  to  annex 
another  Province  to  his  immense  Empire.  A 
light  it  is,  a  vast  Sun,  in  the  heaven  of  his  mind, 
sending  illumination  and  warmth  over  the  whole 
of  that  Empire.  Through  his  gift  of  spiritual 
insight,  through  a  belief  like  that  of  Socrates  in 
his  own  spirituality,  he  is  enabled  to  do  what 
without  such  belief  he  could  not  do,  namely,  to 
overleap  the  gross  and  palpable  of  sense,  and 
to  grasp  the  key  which  opens  the  joyous  realm 
where  embodied  act  is  not  yet,  but  is  ever 
hatching,  the  upper  realm,  whence  the  nobler 
sensibilities  receive  their  polish,  the  realm  mys- 
terious, unfathomable,  actively  though  impalpa- 
bly  above,  around  us,  wherewith  it  is  our  im- 
measurable privilege  to  be  in  close,  mystical, 
more  or  less  conscious  relation,  and  in  imagi- 
nation, nay,  more  than  in  imagination,  to  enter 


SHAKESPEARE.  145 

while  still  on  earth.  Herein  Shakespeare 
reveled,  sharpening  by  that  higher  light  every 
weapon  of  his  vast  mental  armory,  growing  vis- 
ionary with  a  superlative  visionariness,  which 
empowered  him  to  divine  the  thoughts  and 
wills  of  men  with  a  godlike  clearness,  and  with 
a  godlike  sympathy  and  charitableness. 

The  distinctively  human  faculties  in  man 
being  the  spiritual  and  moral,  only  he  who  is 
largely  endowed  with  these  can  figure  to  him- 
self human  beings  in  their  wholeness.  Had 
Shakespeare  not  been  exceptionally  fortified 
with  the  supreme  sensibilities,  not  only  would 
he  not  have  been  able  to  hatch  in  his  mind 
and  thence  project  the  nobler  among  his  per- 
sonages, such  as  Kent,  Vincentio,  Duke  of 
Vienna,  Orlando,  Antonio,  Gonzalo,  Imogen, 
Cordelia  ;  but  none  of  his  personages,  not  the 
lowest,  would  have  moved  before  us  with  the 
fullness  of  being,  the  springiness  of  port,  we 
now  see  in  them.  To  measure  anything,  you 
must  have  in  your  thought  a  standard.  To  say 
that  a  man  is  six  feet  high,  implies  that  you 
carry  within  you  the  conception  of  a  foot.  For 
moral  measurement  you  need  a  moral  standard  ; 
that  is,  you  must  have  within  you,  in  full  propor- 
tion, the  faculties  that  distinctively  constitute  a 
10 


T 46  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

human  being,  the  spiritual  and  moral  faculties. 
As,  to  judge  of  physical  height,  your  own  geo- 
metrical competence  supplies  you  with  a  guage 
in  a  foot,  so,  to  judge  of  moral  height,  your  own 
spiritual  competence  must  supply  you  with  a 
moral  foot.  For  lack  of  this  moral  foot,  in  un- 
confused  sensation,  it  is,  that  moral  judgments 
are  often  unsubstantial,  and  that  such  morally 
deformed  idols  are  at  times  set  up,  to  be  tem- 
porarily worshipped. 

Urged  upward  by  interior  want,  and  carrying 
with  him,  like  cloud-cleaving  Chimborazo,  suc- 
cessive belts  of  fertility,  the  dramatist  must 
reach  this  spiritual  height,  in  order  to  obtain 
a  clear  survey  of  the  wide  diversified  field 
where  he  desires  to  work.  To  this  height 
Shakespeare  rose  with  ease  ;  nay,  he  habitually 
dwelt  thereon  ;  and  hence  there  is  an  airy 
buoyancy  in  all  his  personages,  even  the  most 
weighty,  and  in  his  pages  so  fine  a  light.  The 
normal  state  of  the  poet,  as  such,  is  elation,  ele- 
vation :  when  under  the  spell  of  the  "  vision  and 
the  faculty  divine,"  he  is  lifted  above  himself, 
and  this  vision  and  faculty  become  more  divine 
when  sanctified  by  spiritual  transfiguration. 
The  poet's  sight  grows  more  transpiercing,  his 
touch  more  luminous  ;  he  is  more  of  a  man 
and  works  from  a  higher  plane  of  reality. 


SHAKESPEARE. 

The  sturdy  realism  of  Shakespeare  is  but 
the  solid  basis  to  his  lofty  structures.  Were 
his  realism  less  earthy,  he  could  not  build  so 
high.  The  grander  the  cathedral  and  the  taller 
its  spire,  the  more  firmly  must  it  grasp  the 
earth  with  its  foundations.  Its  foundations 
take  their  shape  and  proportions  from  the  yet 
unreared  grandeurs  above  them :  within  its 
stoutest  folds  the  realism  of  Shakespeare  feels 
his  spiritualism.  His  consciousness  of  the 
cooperative  activity  and  sympathetic  helpful- 
ness of  the  invisible  powers,  is  a  mystic  and 
an  animating  influence  which  works  into  the 
texture  of  his  personages,  imparting  to  them 
some  of  that  springiness  which  marks  them  as 
his.  Shakespeare's  delight  in  the  marvelous 
is,  of  itself,  an  element  of  depth  in  him  which 
tempers  his  whole  view  of  life,  and  which  even 
adds  a  vivacity  to  the  least  poetic  of  his  dia- 
logues. Shakespeare  is  a  spiritual  earthling, 
"  a  budded  angel  graft  on  clay,"  an  Antaeus, 
who  draws  strength  from  the  earth  ;  but  unlike 
that  giant  son  of  the  earth  and  sea,  he  loses 
not  strength  when  lifted  from  the  earth  :  he 
gains  strength.  As  on  his  immense  and  mi- 
nutely divided  scale  of  characterization  he  as- 
cends from  the  base  to  the  top,  the  joyous  laugh 


148  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

of  the  earthling  becomes  the  benignant  smile 
of  the  angel,  the  muscular  grace  of  the  athlete 
is  changed  to  the  winged  puissance  of  a  'de- 
scending Michael.  And,  like  a  lucent  atmos- 
phere at  midday,  moulding  the  earth  to  joy 
and  power,  out  of  the  sunny  depths  of  Shake- 
speare's broad  being  come  the  breath  and  light 
of  his  moral  nature,  giving  warmth  and  sta- 
bility to  details,  and  to  the  grander  scenes  and 
personages  their  wise  significance  and  lasting 
worth. 


XXI. 

THE    MERCHANT   OF   VENICE. 

IN  the  "  Merchant  of  Venice  "  Shakespeare 
pits  against  each  other  two  of  the  most  irrecon- 
cilable opposites  to  be  found  on  the  fretful  mart 
of  human  passions.  Antonio,  by  lending  money 
gratis,  has  hindered  Shylock  of  half  a  million, 
which  is  daily  to  tap  an  artery  of  Shylock's 
life  :  that  life  is  all  run  into  love  of  gain.  For 
this  life-tapping,  Shylock  would,  with  his  own 
hand,  cut  out  the  heart  of  Antonio. 

In  the  conflicts  of  business  and  ambition  two 
competitors  often  baffle  one  the  other,  without 
being  unlike,  at  times  indeed  even  from  very 
likeness.  But  the.intercrossings  of  such  two 
would  furnish  a  less  capable  subject  for  pictur- 
esque dramatic  representation.  In  the  case  of 
Antonio  and  Shylock  a  deep  moral  difference 
underlies  the  mutual  antagonism.  Shakespeare 
dramatically  needed  the  diversity,  the  oppug- 
nancy,  and  so,  as  is  his  profound  wont,  he  sec- 
onds his  infallible  artistic  instinct  with  moral 
conditions,  sinking,  as  nature  does,  into  the  in- 


150  BRIEF  ESS  A  VS. 

most  being  the  roots  of  the  variegated  flowers 
he  has  made  to  bloom  on  the  surface.  Had  An- 
tonio come  to  Venice  as  a  visitor,  and  fallen  but 
casually  in  contact  with  Shylock,  and  not  as 
a  constant  counterworker,  between  the  two, 
even  had  they  both  been  Christians  or  both 
Jews,  would  have  arisen  a  mutual  instinctive 
repulsion,  the  one  being  generous,  kindly,  liv- 
ing much  out  of  himself,  carrying  an  open 
heart  that  is  ever  opening  his  purse  :  the  other 
hard,  morose  from  penuriousness,  a  griping 
usurer,  who  would  use  every  man  as  so  much 
capital,  funded  for  his  benefit,  from  which  his 
own  shrewdness  was  to  draw  dividends. 

With  his  veracious  perception  of  the  actual- 
ities of  life,  and  his  masterly  artistic  handiness 
in  harmonizing  contrasts,  Shakespeare  at  times 
includes  in  one  frame  Comedy  and  Tragedy. 
To  tragedy  death  is  not  necessary  ;  and  there 
are  catastrophes  which  to  the  victim  would  have 
been  lightened  by  decease.  The  moral  (in  the 
high  sense)  may  not  demand  the  extinction 
even  of  a  towering  transgressor,  and  the  pro- 
portions of  Art  may  forbid  it ;  but  that  to  him 
death  would  have  been,  not  a  penalty,  but  a 
release,  reveals  a  deeply  tragic  element.  Such 
•there  is  in  the  "  Merchant  of  Venice."  Had 


THE  MERCHANT  OF  VENICE.  \  5  I 

suicide  been  a  crime  to  which  Jews  are  ad- 
dicted, instead  of  being  one  from  which  they  re- 
coil with  peculiar  aversion,  Shylock  might  have 
turned  his  whetted  knife  upon  himself  with  as 
much  justification  as  do  Brutus  and  Othello 
their  swords  ;  and,  when  overwhelmed  by  the 
sentence  of  the  judge,  and  goaded  by  the 
taunts  of  the  bystanders,  he  might  have  had 
the  grim  satisfaction  of  spattering  with  his 
blood  the  triumphant  circle  of  Christian  mock- 
ers. 

Daily  life  offers  many  a  group  where,  as  in  the 
"  Merchant  of  Venice,"  in  the  midst  of  a  light 
laughing  company  a  tragic  figure  moves  and 
errs  and  suffers,  and  where  often  his  suffering 
casts  as  little  of  gloom  as  Shylock's  did  upon 
those  about  him.  Hereby  the  tragic  is  deep- 
ened. Total  refusal  of  sympathy,  absolute  is- 
olation, aggravates  the  tragic  condition,  even 
though  Shylock  himself,  from  his  unsympa- 
thetic habits,  feels  the  isolation  but  partially. 

Shylock  is  a  peremptory  representative,  ac- 
credited by  the  sovereign,  Shakespeare.  The 
story  of  the  Hebrew  people,  for  two  thousand 
years  ever  struck  down,  but  never  subdued, 
scorned,  persecuted,  but  never  weakened,  never 
disheartened,  this  is  the  most  loaded  tragedy 


I  5  2  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

of  History,  a  tragedy  whose  scenes  are  cen- 
turies, whose  acts  are  the  epochs  of  civilization, 
whose  stage  is  the  globe.  Happily  closed  now 
is  its  last  act,  the  ban  against  this  remarkable 
people  being  lifted  by  the  growth  of  moral 
culture  in  Christendom.  The  hard  stern  side 
in  this  excommunicated  life  of  a  people,  Shake- 
speare has  condensed  into  Shylock.  Shylock 
leaves  the  court-room  baffled,  impoverished, 
cruelly  mocked,  but  unbowed.  His  was  not  a 
spirit  to  be  subjugated  by  man. 

The  heartlessness  and  levity  of  Jessica  are 
to  some  a  blemish  on  the  beauty  of  this  play. 
But  Shakespeare,  a  rigorous  realist,  saw  men 
and  women  as  they  are,  idealizing  each  chosen 
specimen,  not  by  smoothing  its  prominences 
with  the  false  aim  of  academical  impotence,  but 
by  unfolding  each  to  its  utmost  in  the  light  of 
poetic  vision,  —  the  only  genuine  idealization. 
By  the  absence  of  all  sentiment  in  her  smile- 
less  home,  the  natural  superficiality  of  Jessica 
has  been  cultivated.  Being  unlike  her  father 
—  as  so  many  children  are  —  the  unlikeness, 
in  the  absence  of  all  generous  concession  on 
his  part  (and  children  are  particularly  attached 
by  generosity),  grew  to  indifference  to  him,  and, 
in  the  absence  in  her  of  earnestness  of  char- 


THE  MERCHANT  OF  VENICE.  153 

acter,  turns  to  dislike  of  his  absorbing  passion, 
and  to  frivolous  contempt  for  its  object.  One 
of  the  curses  of  miserhood  is  its  proneness  to 
envelop  its  victim  in  a  dark  loneliness,  even 
amid  the  household  lights  of  affection.  Around 
Shylock  this  gloom  is  deepened  by  the  unfilial 
conduct  of  his  only  child,  of  which  unfilial  con- 
duct his  unparental  conduct  was  partly  the 
cause;  while  the  unlikeness  between  the  two 
heightens  the  play  of  contrasts,  which  is  a 
characteristic  of  this  brilliant  drama. 


XXII. 

TAMING  OF  THE  SHREW. 

OUR  world  teems  with  materials  for  poetry. 
Wherever  there  is  life,  poetic  aspects  are  to  be 
won.  Under  every  life-current  which  has  depth 
to  float  a  literary  venture,  there  lie  unrevealed 
treasures  and  gems,  which  only  genius  has  the 
vision  and  the  vigor  to  perceive  and  dive  for, 
and  which  such  genius  joyfully  seizes,  and  then 
holds  up  in  the  sun  of  admiration,  dripping 
with  beauty.  To  do  this  is  the  token  of  genial 
power,  and  if  to  the  gift  of  poetic  sensibility  be 
added  thoughtfulness  and  strength,  it  cannot 
but  be  done. 

These  fresh  revelations  of  life  and  beauty 
may  be  called  the  nervous  centres  of  a  literary 
organism,  the  ganglia  which  concentrate  and 
distribute  motive  force  ;  and  according  to  their 
number,  potency,  and  fineness,  is  the  organic 
vitality  of  the  work  and  its  elevation,  on  the 
scale  of  aesthetic  originality.  At  passages  thus 
vitalized,  the  reader  is  arrested,  to  be  warmed 
by  the  flame  they  kindle  within  him.  Any  one 


TAMING   OF  THE  SHREW.  155 

capable  of  poetic  sympathy,  can  in  a  moment 
experience  this  animating  warmth  by  opening 
"  Hamlet,"  or  "  As  You  Like  It."  These  two 
first  occur  to  us  because  their  subjects,  being 
especially  congenial  to  Shakespeare,  they  fill  to 
its  fullest  his  mind,  which  richly  overflows,  and 
deposits  its  wealth  with  as  much  ease  and 
abundance  as  the  Nile  does  its  annual  gift  of 
fertility.  You  can  hardly  read  twenty  lines 
anywhere,  without  pausing  to  delight  in  some 
sparkling  jewel  set  in  the  golden  page.  Now, 
of  these  gems  of  thought,  sentiment,  and  ex- 
pression, none  are  to  be  met  with  in  the  "  Tam- 
ing of  the  Shrew."  Thence  we  conclude  that 
this  comedy  is  the  work  of  the  playwright 
Shakespeare,  and  not  of  the  poet.  Shakespeare, 
the  greatest  poet  of  the  world,  was  also  the 
greatest  playwright.  As  the  principal  pro- 
prietor of  a  theatre,  he  made  it  one  of  his  func- 
tions to  keep  his  stage  refreshed  with  new 
pieces.  It  was  a  dramatic  age.  Dramatic  writ- 
ers seem  to  have  freely  used  the  works  of  their 
predecessors,  and  even  of  their  contemporaries. 
Collier  thinks  it  is  evident  that,  in  writing  the 
"  Taming  of  the  Shrew,"  Shakespeare  made 
great  use  of  a  previous  comedy  called  "  Taming 
of  a  Shrew."  A  most  skillful  playwright,  Shake- 
speare well  knew  how  to  tighten  loose  knots, 


156  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

to  give  a  logical  sequence  to  scenes,  to  put  in 
touches  characteristic  or  sprightly,  and  to  bind 
the  dialogue  in  that  chain  of  vivacity,  wrought 
in  his  wondrously  vivid  mind.  To  find  a  good 
subject  ready  dramatized,  which  by  his  ma- 
nipulation would  be  made  more  buoyant  and 
compact,  was  doubtless  a  godsend  to  the  prac- 
tical Shakespeare.  He  could  thus,  in  two  or 
three  weeks,  turn  out  a  play  that  would  draw 
as  much  into  the  treasury  of  the  company,  as 
one  of  his  orginal  dramas  that  cost  him  three 
or  four  months'  work.  That  the  "  Taming  of 
the  Shrew"  is  only  thus  secondarily  Shake- 
speare's, we  infer  from  its  almost  total  want  in 
passages  of  poetic  glow,  such  as  in  his  other 
comedies  shoot  up,  with  more  or  less  frequency, 
like  jets  of  transparent  fire. 

A  partial  exception  must  be  made  for  the 
speech  of  Catherine  at  the  close  of  the  play, 
the  speech  beginning  "  Fie,  fie."  Here  is  no 
occasion  for  glow  ;  but  what  a  sparkle  there  is 
of  intellectual  vivacity.  This  is  all  Shake- 
speare's. What  a  propontic  flow  in  the  cur- 
rent, showing,  from  its  depth  and  volume,  that 
there  is  a  deep  capacious  sea  behind  it.  And 
how  thoroughly  is  the  long  speech  saved  from 
didactic  tedium  by  the  figurative  luminousness 
in  which  its  counsel  is  enwreathed. 


XXIII. 

THE  TEMPEST. 

EACH  play  of  Shakespeare  has  its  character, 
as  each  of  his  personages  has  his  or  her  in- 
dividuality. When  by  Shakespeare  a  subject 
was  taken  up,  its  quality  and  the  chief  agents 
that  give  it  consistence  moulded  the  plan,  and 
determined  the  nature  and  tone  of  the  drama 
to  be  evolved.  This  seems  to  me  his  process. 
He  did  not  select  a  subject  directly  for  the  pur- 
pose of  exhibiting  characteristics  in  individuals, 
or  the  effects  of  certain  courses  ;  but  he  set  in 
motion  the  men  and  women  who  belong  to  a 
given  circle  of  events,  and,  through  their  rela- 
tions to  one  another,  and  to  the  end  to  which 
pointed  their  individualities,  and  the  interplay 
of  these,  he  shaped  their  combination  into  an 
organic  whole.  So  versed  was  Shakespeare  in 
the  possibilities  of  human  conjunctions  and 
catastrophes,  so  deep  in  the  confidence  of  the 
human  heart,  his  imagination  was  so  free  and 
potent,  that  he  had  but  to  bring  together  the 
individuals  who  belonged  to  the  chosen  subject, 


158  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

and  give  them  impulse  from  his  own  mighty 
being,  and  they,  like  their  fellows  in  actual 
life,  would  work  out  a  healthy  moral,  and, 
under  the  guidance  of  his  aesthetic  genius, 
present  a  rounded  whole,  as  symmetrical  in 
shape  as  it  was  lively  in  action  and  profound 
in  import. 

That  this  was  the  procedure  of  Shakespeare, 
is  transparent  on  his  page  ;  and  it  was  his 
because  it  is  that  of  nature.  In  man  the  feel- 
ings are  the  primary  power :  the  intellect  is 
their  instrument.  The  weal  and  life  of  the 
body  is  not  more  bound  to  the  warmth  of  the 
heart  that  pulsates  at  its  core,  than  is  the  per- 
sonality of  the  man  to  his  desires  and  aspira- 
tions :  they  build  his  character.  The  artist 
who  would  rival  nature,  must  make  the  hearts 
of  his  personages  beat  sadly  or  joyfully,  as  the 
conditions  may  impose,  but  distinctly,  ener- 
getically. For  this  he  needs  have  within  him- 
self a  warm,  strong  throb,  that  tunes  itself  with 
a  ready  love  to  the  varied  moods  of  humanity  ; 
and  therewith  a  poetic  ear  that  seizes  the  music 
in  each.  To  construct  characters  in  order  to 
exhibit  certain  phases  of  doing  or  suffering, 
and  with  the  understanding  to  plan  all  the 
movements  and  control  them  to  a  given  end, 


THE   TEMPEST.  159 

this  being  counter  to  nature's  method,  will  re- 
sult, not  in  art  but  in  artificiality,  not  in  poetry, 
but  in  mechanism.  The  initiative  is  with  the 
feelings,  not  with  the  intellect.  In  the  drama, 
especially,  the  story  growing  out  of  the  char- 
acters (in  the  epic  the  story  governs  the  agents), 
these  drive,  so  to  speak,  the  events  before 
them.  For  this,  of  course,  they  must  be  vig- 
orously and  warmly  conceived,  and  so  con- 
joined, so  harmonized  and  contrasted,  as  to 
build  by  their  action  and  reaction  a  whole  at 
once  picturesque  and  real.  In  the  constructive 
function,  in  the  handling  of  the  materials  fur- 
nished by  the  heart  as  well  as  those  furnished 
by  itself,  the  intellectual  constituent  of  art 
finds  one  of  its  fields ;  and  here  the  judgment 
of  Shakespeare  approves  itself  equal  to  his 
aesthetic  susceptibility. 

A  deaf  mute  might  give  evidence  of  great 
intellect  by  the  way  in  which  he  conducts  him- 
self and  directs  others  ;  but  besides  action, 
which  its  name  implies,  the  drama  asks  for 
talk.  It  is  in  the  profoundness  and  keenness, 
the  range  and  subtlety,  the  solidity  and  splendor 
of  his  talk,  that  Shakespeare  exhibits  again,  in 
unequaled  degree  and  harmony,  the  union  of 
sensibility  with  intelligence.  His  talk  is  at 


160  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

once  more  natural  and  more  ideal,  at  once  more 
unprompted  and  more  logically  affiliated,  than 
can  elsewhere  be  read.  The  intellectual  ac- 
tivity among  his  interlocutors  is  higher,  more 
brilliant  and  better  sustained  than  among  any 
other  talkers  of  whom  we  have  record. 

Of  all  Shakespeare's  plays  "  The  Tempest" 
may  perhaps  be  deemed  the  most  intellectual,  in 
this  sense,  that  having  of  course,  a  deep  basis 
of  feeling,  the  personages,  their  passions  and 
aims,  all  cooperate  to  a  triumphal  pomp  of  in- 
tellectual power.  In  this  wonderful  poem  the 
poet  plays  the  god.  He  controls  the  elements, 
and  creates  living,  speaking  beings,  the  like  of 
whom  had  not  before  been  known  on  the  earth. 
The  raising  and  stilling  of  the  storm,  the  mas- 
tery over  the  minds  of  the  ship's  inmates,  this 
is  the  magnificent  apparatus  of  the  poem,  sym- 
bolical of  mental  might.  In  Prospero  is  imag- 
inatively displayed  the  power  to  be  attained 
by  intellectual  culture  and  spiritual  elevation, 
with  self-devotion  to  high  ends.  But  Caliban 
and  Ariel  are  new  creatures,  not  our  fellows, 
like  lago  and  Imogen.  They  are  sub-  and 
super-humanities,  sprung  from  a  brain  which, 
in  the  momentum  of  its  imaginative  sweep,  and 
the  intensity  of  its  creative  vis,  swings  beyond 


THE   TEMPEST.  l6l 

the  known  circle  of  nature,  but,  still  intuitively 
obedient  to  her  laws,  gives  birth  to  beings  who 
are  within  the  pale  of  nature,  while  outside 
that  of  earthly  humanity. 

Caliban,  above  the  brutes,  in  that  he  has  the 
use  of  speech  and  a  broader  intelligence,  is  yet 
below  the  upper  class  of  them  ;  for  Prospero 
says  he  will  "  take  no  print  of  goodness,"  and  is 
one  "  whom  stripes  may  move,  not  kindness  ;  " 
and  Caliban  himself  declares  that  all  the  profit 
he  has  of  language  is  that  he  "  knows  how  to 
curse."  Caliban  is  not  z/;zhuman,  for  he  has  no 
quality  that  human  beings  have  not  ;  he  is 
dfchuman,  that  is,  a  being  from  whom  the  dis- 
tinctively human  has  been  subtracted.  He 
wears  in  his  head  the  precious  jewel  of  intel- 
lect, but  this  is  not  irradiated  by  light  from  the 
spiritual  and  moral  faculties,  nor  even  by  that 
from  the  upper  reason,  and  hence  it  sparkles 
not,  but  is  dimmed  by  fumes  that  are  ever 
rising  from  the  animal  abyss.  Fancy  the 
horse  and  the  dog  endowed  with  as  much  un- 
derstanding as  Caliban  to  guide  their  selfish- 
ness, and  with  a  corresponding  capacity  of 
speech  ;  then,  instead  of  affectionate,  faithful, 
subordinate  servants,  we  should  have  in  them 
self-seeking,  treacherous,  cruel  rivals.  All  Cali- 
ii 


1 62  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

ban's  joys  and  pains  are  of  the  flesh,  and  his 
fears  do  not  reach  beyond  pinches  and  cramps. 
For  the  joy  of  drink  he  will  make  Stephano 
king,  and  be  his  slave.  And  here  Caliban  steps 
back  into  the  pale  of  humanity.  How  many 
a  man  enacts  Caliban,  making  himself  the  slave 
of  appetite  and  passion,  shutting  out  the  upper 
light  of  which  he  has  more  or  less  within  him 
(and  of  which  poor  Caliban  had  no  glimmer), 
thus  exiling  himself  from  the  beauties  and 
beatitudes  of  life,  and  stifling  his  whole  being 
into  a  self-built  dungeon. 

One  of  the  preeminences  of  Shakespeare  is 
this,  that  a  trait  or  act,  struck  out  of  the  in- 
dividuality of  the  scene  and  personages,  is  dis- 
covered to  be  symbolical,  at  once  specific  and 
generic.  Shakespeare  did  not  say  to  himself, 
"  Here  is  an  occasion  to  embody  a  generality, 
to  put  forth  in  individual  form  what  shall  be 
a  telling  illustration  of  common  human  weak- 
ness." Not  in  the  least.  With  his  profound 
insight  into  being,  with  his  vivacity  of  wit  as 
well  as  of  scenic  movement,  he  drew  Caliban 
to  the  life.  An  unbroken  consanguinity  binds 
into  palpitating  oneness  the  world  of  man,  all 
its  complexities  and  diversities ;  and  such  is 
the  depth  and  fullness  of  Shakespeare's  intu- 


THE   TEMPEST.  1 6$ 

ition,  that  a  fidelity  of  detail  like  this  lets  a 
didactic  type  shine  through  itself.  If  you  wish 
to  show  the  grace  of  a  beautiful  young  girl, 
you  do  not  say  to  her,  "  My  dear,  walk  across 
the  room,  that  my  friend  may  see  how  graceful 
you  are  ;  "  that  would  somewhat  mar  your  very 
purpose  ;  but  you  send  her  across  the  room 
on  an  errand,  and  as  she  executes  the  small 
commission,  she  unconsciously  displays  a  grace 
that  would  ravish  the  sense  of  beholding  mul- 
titudes. 

In  the  brain  of  Shakespeare,  thoughts,  the 
broadest  and  deepest,  spring  up  spontaneously  : 
they  come  to  him  he  knows  not  how  or  whence, 
and  gleaming  out  of  upper  spheres  they  yet 
fit  an  ordinary  fact  or  motion,  suddenly  illu- 
minating it,  —  thoughts  high,  subtle,  imagina- 
tive, yet  apt  to  the  matter,  abstractions  that 
yet  glow  with  a  familiar  light.  A  common- 
place is  sometimes  enlivened  by  being  turned 
by  him  into  a  far-reaching  generality. 

Shakespeare  digs  into  the  earth  for  Caliban. 
Caliban  is  steeped  in  sense.  With  roots  deep 
under  ground,  he  is  but  a  stump  of  humanity, 
a  growth  suddenly  truncated,  and  so  without 
foliage  or  fruit.  He  has  sensation  and  some 
understanding,  but  no  aspiration,  no  con- 


164  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

science,  no  wide  discourse  of  reason.  Ariel 
springs  from  the  other  pole :  in  him  we  have 
a  glimpse  of  what  man  will  be  when  disbur- 
dened of  his  body.  He  is  not  unhuman :  he 
is  unbodied,  and  thence  is  superhuman  only 
in  the  sense  that  he  is  above  man  in  being 
exempt  from  the  physical  obstructions  of  flesh. 
The  secret  of  the  being  and  individuality  both 
of  Ariel  and  of  Caliban  lies,  in  the  subtraction 
from  normal  human  beings  of  some  of  their 
attributes.  In  Caliban  the  higher  human,  the 
spiritual  and  moral,  have  been  subtracted  ;  in 
Ariel,  the  wants  and  the  cumbrance  of  the 
body.  The  one  is  the  type  of  the  earthy, 
material  and  gross,  the  other  of  the  immaterial 
and  subtile ;  and  yet,  neither  has  any  quality 
or  faculty  not  in  human  nature.  No  moral  or 
intellectual  quality,  not  in  human  nature,  can 
be  conceived  by  the  mind  of  man.  Any  at- 
tempt to  shape  a  being  with  extrahuman  quali- 
ties, would  end  in  nonsense.  Soar  as  it  will 
hundreds  of  millions  of  leagues  into  space, 
the  imagination  cannot  exceed  its  humanity  : 
to  this  it  is  bound  by  a  thread  that  never 
snaps ;  at  the  utmost  reaches  of  its  flight,  it 
will  find  no  creature  but  of  its  creating. 
The  most  of  his  subjects  and  plots,  Shake- 


THE   TEMPEST.  165 

speare  took  from  printed  tales,  or  legends,  or 
other  plays.  "  The  Tempest "  is  one  of  the 
few  that  has  not  been  tracked  to  any  of  these 
sources.  Collier  turned  over  the  leaves  of 
every  Italian  novelist  anterior  to  the  age  of 
Shakespeare,  but  found  no  trace  of  the  inci- 
dents of  "  The  Tempest."  On  the  far  confines 
of  his  imaginative  range,  Shakespeare  may 
have  espied  some  dim  nucleus,  which  at  once 
began  to  sparkle  under  his  gaze,  and  which, 
fed  on  the  stores  of  his  invention,  so  throve, 
that  it  grew  into  "  The  Tempest."  "  The  Tem- 
pest "  is  a  translucent  splendor,  hung  between 
earth  and  heaven,  a  glittering  crystalline  prism, 
through  which  from  the  Shakesperian  sun  shoot 
fiery  beams,  in  their  many-colored  brilliancy, 
flashing  onward  forever,  to  glorify  and  animate 
the  minds  that  are  so  blest  as  to  come  within 
their  play.  Here  Shakespeare  substantiates, 
with  exceptional  distinctness,  his  theory  of 
poetic  creation  :  — 

"  The  poet's  eye  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling, 
Doth  glance  from  heaven  to  earth,  from  earth  to  heaven, 
And  as  imagination  bodies  forth 
The  forms  of  things  unknown,  the  poet's  pen 
Turns  them  to  shapes,  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 
A  local  habitation  and  a  name ; " 


l66  BRIEF  ESSA  VS. 

and  ever,  even  in  the  finest  frenzy,  keeping  not 
only  within  the  bounds  of  truth,  but  seizing 
and  embodying  the  very  essence  and  beauty 
of  truth.  This  infallible  truthfulness  it  is  that 
constitutes  Shakespeare's  poetic  greatness,  his 
supreme  literary  elevation.  None  but  the  poet 
can  know  the  whole  truth,  and  when,  as  with 
Shakespeare,  there  is  a  unique  completeness 
of  endowment,  the  range  is  thereby  so  wide, 
so  universal,  that  the  poetic  vision  falls  crea- 
tively on  all  kinds  of  incidents,  interests,  pas- 
sions, casting  illumination,  and  making  the 
truth  flash  out,  wherever  it  falls. 

How  Shakespeare  clings  to,  hugs  the  matter 
in  hand,  with  what  a  quickening  virtue  he 
transfuses  himself  into  the  scene  and  person- 
ages, so  enlivening  reality  with  poetic  breath, 
that  it  seems  more  alive  than  actual  fact,  is  in 
no  scene  that  he  drew  more  manifest  than  in 
the  opening  of  "  The  Tempest,"  —  the  storm 
at  sea  brought  before  our  eyes  by  the  words 
and  bearing  of  the  crew  and  the  passengers. 
The  naturalness  and  fidelity  conceal  the  art 
In  the  next  scene,  where  the  storm  is  repeated 
in  the  report  of  it  made  to  Prospero  by  his 
agent  Ariel,  Shakespeare  out-Shakespeare's 
himself. 


XXIV. 

MACBETH. 

BETWEEN  Macbeth  and  his  wife  the  murder 
of  King  Duncan  was  projected  before  the  open- 
ing of  the  tragedy.  In  the  last  scene  of  Act 
I.,  when  Macbeth,  seemingly  relenting  of  his 
bloody  purpose,  exclaims,  in  answer  to  Lady 
Macbeth's  scornful  reproaches, 

"  I  dare  do  all  that  may  become  a  man 
Who  dares  do  more  is  none," 

she  rejoins, 

"  What  beast  was't,  then, 
That  made  you  break  this  enterprise  to  me  ? 

Nor  time,  nor  place 

Did  then  adhere,  and  yet  you  would  make  both  : 
They've  made  themselves,  and  that  their  fitness  now 
Doth  unmake  you." 

This  cannot  possibly  refer  to  any  interview 
between  them  since  Macbeth's  return  home, 
for  ever  since  his  arrival,  time  and  place  do 
adhere,  Macbeth  having  just  preceded  Dun- 
can, who  "  coursed  him  at  the  heels,"  in  their 
way  to  Inverness.  Observe,  in  passing,  the 


1 68  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

friendly,  affectionate,  and  yet  kingly  greeting 
of  Duncan  to  Lady  Macbeth,  and  the  delicate 
compliment  when  he  tells  her  that  he  had  pur- 
posed being  before  Macbeth,  — 

"  But  he  rides  well, 

And  his  great  love,  sharp  as  his  spur,  hath  holp  him 
To  his  home  before  us." 

This  is  a  sample  of  that  deep  serene  natural- 
ness, which  is  one  of  the  fascinations  of  Shake- 
speare, and  at  the  same  time  of  his  breadth  of 
treatment,  his  divine  power  of  grasping  a  whole 
in  all  its  complexity  and  the  significance  of  its 
detail.  This  gentle  confiding  greeting  of  the 
king,  what  a  foreground  it  is  to  the  murder 
that  is  just  behind  it,  blackening  unseen  the 
heart  of  the  hostess  he  greets.  Of  the  same 
kind  is,  at  the  opening  of  this  scene,  the  speech 
of  Banquo  about  "the  temple-haunting  mart- 
let." The  poetry  is  not  all  in  the  thought  and 
exquisite  execution  of  the  passage ;  some  of 
it  is  in  putting  such  a  passage  just  there. 

The  words,  "nor  time  nor  place  did  then 
adhere ; "  that  is,  when  Macbeth  first  broke 
his  project  to  Lady  Macbeth,  point  necessarily 
to  a  period  anterior  to  the  opening  scene  of 
the  play,  ere  Macbeth  had  gone  to  the  field  at 


MACBETH.  169 

the  head  of  the  king's  forces.  This  is  clear : 
these  words  can  have  no  other  meaning. 

Now,  go  back  to  the  third  scene,  and  note 
the  effect  on  Macbeth  when  Banquo  and  he 
are  waylaid  by  the  three  Witches.  These  greet 
him  with  the  triple  title  of  Glamis,  Cawdor, 
and  king  that  shall  be.  What  that  effect  is 
we  learn  from  the  exclamation  of  Banquo :  — 

"  Good  sir,  why  do  you  start,  and  seem  to  fear 
Things  that  do  sound  so  fair  ?  " 

Startled  by  the  Witches'  words,  because  they 
suddenly  reveal  the  murderous  secret  in  his 
bosom,  Macbeth  "  seems  rapt  withal."  While 
Banquo  is  questioning  the  hags,  he  recovers 
himself,  and  then  the  hopes  that  had  made  him 
conceive  the  murder  return  to  him,  freshened 
and  deepened  by  the  flattering  disclosures  of 
the  witches.  Eagerly  he  questions  them,  and 
is  sorely  disappointed  when,  without  further 
speech,  they  vanish.  The  whole  bearing  of 
Macbeth  denotes  a  foregone  conclusion. 

Now  mark  how  he  becomes  still  more  deeply 
rapt  when  a  few  moments  later  he  meets  Rosse 
and  Angus,  sent  by  the  king  "  to  give  thee 
from  our  royal  master  thanks,"  and  they,  greet- 
ing him  as  thane  of  Cawdor,  so  far  confirm  the 
outgivings  of  the  Witches.  Then  we  have  that 


I/O  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

picture  of  the  guilty  self-questioning  heart,  one 
of  those  gorgeous  passages,  gold-embossed,  and 
thicker  studded  than  is  usual  even  in  Shake- 
speare, with  sparkling  jewels.  Here  he  toys 
with  the  murder  that  is  in  his  mind,  though 
it  makes  his  heart  to  knock  at  his  ribs.  A 
bloody  gigantic  crime  does  not,  in  a  nature 
like  Macbeth's,  if  in  any  nature,  grow  suddenly 
into  ripeness  for  execution.  The  "  supernatural 
soliciting  "  which  at  first  shakes  Macbeth,  soon 
strengthens  him,  and  the  murderous  plot,  long 
before  conceived,  and  which  nearly  slept,  is 
reawakened,  and  reawakened  into  stronger 
light,  as  may  be  inferred  from  his  speech  in 
the  next  scene  on  leaving  the  king,  »who 
has  just  proclaimed  Malcolm  successor  to  the 
throne. 

Let  us  now,  outriding  both  Macbeth  and 
King  Duncan,  reach  Inverness  in  time  to  hear 
Lady  Macbeth  read  the  letter  from  her  hus- 
band, and  comment  thereon.  And  first  we  ask, 
in  the  tenor  and  tone  of  that  letter  and  in 
its  brevity,  is  there  not  something  taken  for 
granted  ?  But  if  the  letter  itself  does  not, 
surely  the  comment  on  it  does,  point  to  a 
foregone  conclusion.  Not  a  moment  does  she 
stop  to  consider  the  wonder  of  the  revelation, 


MACBETH.  I^I 

but  instantly  on  closing  the  letter,  without 
pause,  she  exclaims  :  — 

"  Glamis  thou  art,  and  Cawdor ;  and  shalt  be 
What  thou  art  promised." 

Most  evidently  the  prospect  here  opened  to 
her  is  no  new  one,  but  one  which  she  was 
accustomed  to  look  at.  Had  the  thought  of 
the  crown  been  now  first  presented  to  her 
mind,  how  could  it  leap  instantly,  at  one  bound, 
to  the  great  crime  of  assassination  ?  This  were 
out  of  nature.  Moreover,  how  hardened  by 
guilty  imaginations,  how  steeped  already  in 
murder,  by  brooding  on  the  nest  of  ambition, 
must  be  the  heart  that  could  prompt  that  ap- 
palling soliloquy,  uttered  the  instant  after  she 
learns  that  Duncan  is  coming,  and  within  five 
minutes  after  reading  the  letter :  — 

"  The  raven  himself  is  hoarse, 
That  croaks  the  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan 
Under  my  battlements." 

And  when,  at  the  end  of  that  soliloquy,  Mac- 
beth enters,  with  a  burst  of  hellish  joy  she 
greets  him,  which  he  answers  with,  — 

"  My  dearest  love, 

Duncan  comes  here  to-night. 

Lady  Macbeth.  And  when  goes  hence  ? 

Matbeth.  To-morrow  as  he  purposes. 

Lady  M.  Oh  never 

Shall  sun  that  morrow  see." 


172  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

In  the  first  Act,  every  time  that  Macbeth 
and  Lady  Macbeth  appear,  whether  they  be 
together,  or  alone,  or  in  contact  with  others, 
each  scene  corroborates  the  preceding  one  in 
showing  that  the  murder  of  the  King  was  a 
project  that  had  been  entertained,  and,  in  the 
minds  of  both,  determined  on,  before  the  open- 
ing of  the  drama.  When  in  the  fifth  scene, 
just  after  Lady  Macbeth  has  read  the  letter, 
an  attendant  enters,  and  in  answer  to  her  in- 
quiry, "  What  is  your  tidings  ? "  answers,  "  The 
King  comes  here  to  night,"  her  passionate  ex- 
clamation, "  Thou'rt  mad  to  say  it,"  is  the  out- 
flashing  of  her  joy  that  at  once,  within  a  few 
hours,  by  this  happy  circumstance,  can  be 
consummated  the  deed, 

"  Which  shall  to  all  our  nights  and  days  to  come 
Give  solely  sovereign  sway  and  masterdom." 

More  in  harmony  is  it  with  the  habitual  far- 
reaching  forethought  of  Shakespeare,  that  this 
great  tragedy,  built  on  ambition,  and  the  dark, 
more  deliberate  desires  of  mature  life,  should 
have  its  foundations  laid  solidly  in  the  being 
of  its  two  unflinching  movers.  By  him  effects 
are  never  presented  unbacked  by  correspond- 
ing and  sufficient  causes.  Shakespeare  always 
sends  down  roots,  strong  and  deep  in  proper- 


MACBETH.  173 

tion  to  the  breadth  and  weight  of  the  deeds 
they  underlie  and  feed.  The  prophetic  and 
loving  interpreter  of  the  human  heart  could 
not  wrong  and  trifle  with  it,  by  making  it  im- 
provise a  gigantic  crime. 

This  throwing  of  the  murderous  inception 
back  beyond  the  time  when  the  play  opens, 
gives  to  the  Witches  their  proper  place.  If 
Macbeth  had  not  for  some  time  carried  the 
murder  in  his  mind,  then  the  seed  was  planted 
there  by  the  greeting  of  the  Witches  when  he 
first  meets  them  on  the  heath,  and  they,  bidden 
by  him  to  speak,  hail  him  as  king  that  shall  be. 
But  that  this  was  not  the  first  seed,  we  know 
positively  from  Lady  Macbeth's  taunts  in  the 
seventh  scene.  And,  had  we  not  this  convin- 
cing external  evidence,  ought  we  not  to  infer, 
from  psychological  causes,  that  it  was  not  so  ? 
Would  Shakespeare  make  a  hag's  prophetic 
hail  the  pivot  upon  which  this  whole  tragic 
drama  turns  ?  More  in  consonance  is  it  with 
the  resources  and  the  mysterious  initiative  of 
the  human  heart,  to  make  the  mind  of  Macbeth 
primary,  and  the  Witches  secondary  in  the 
forecasting  of  the  murder.  The  Witches  are 
a  fantastic  embodiment  of  the  grosser  human 
desires,  of  evil  possibilities.  Macbeth  has  con- 


1 74  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

ceived  the  murder,  and  these  stand  for  the  foul 
wishes,  the  black  purposes  that  made  him  con- 
ceive it.  The  Witches  are  low,  squalid,  of  the 
earth,  most  earthy,  who  burrow  into  the  darkest 
and  foulest  fancies  for  ingredients  for  their 
hell-broth.  They  are  an  echo  to  the  selfish 
aims  of  Macbeth,  who  is  cajoled  and  flattered 
by  them,  just  as  we  all  are  liable  to  be  by  car- 
nal lusts  and  selfish  wills  and  unhallowed  am- 
bitions. They  suddenly  fan  into  a  blaze  the 
fire  that  lay  smouldering  in  Macbeth's  heart. 
Our  evil  desires  ever  seize  us  in  moments  of 
weakness.  That  with  all  their  earthiness  they 
are  unearthly,  gives  them  a  poetic  efficacy, 
Shakespeare  availing  himself  of  the  popular 
belief  in  evil  spirits  to  make  the  instinct  of  the 
marvelous  aid  him  in  his  high  purpose. 

The  Witches  open  the  tragedy  with  only  a 
few  lines,  but  these  so  significant  that  they  are 
an  overture  to  the  whole  play.  Entering  in 
thunder  and  lightning,  they  are  met  to  appoint 
another  meeting  on  the  heath,  "  There  to  meet 
with  Macbeth."  In  the  thoughts  of  Macbeth 
is  an  embryo  murder:  their  function  is,  so 
skillfully  to  feed  the  embryo,  that  it  shall 
quickly  come  to  maturity  in  act.  Before  van- 
ishing, all  the  three  unite  in  two  lines  indica- 


MACBETH.  175 

tive  of  their  work  and  of  the  moral  medium  in 
which  they  do  it,  — 

"  Fair  is  foul,  and  foul  is  fair  : 
Hover  through  the  fog  and  filthy  air." 

Macbeth,  the  stronger  nature,  has  the  initia- 
tive. He  first  broke  the  murder  to  his  wife,  as 
she  avers  in  Scene  7  of  Act  I.  The  thought 
thus  lodged  in  her  mind,  ambition  and  sympa- 
thy with  her  husband  secretly  nursed,  imagi- 
nation feeding  it  so  succulently,  that  at  the 
first  vent  offered,  it  rushes  out  full  grown  on 
receipt  of  the  prophetic  letter ;  and  when,  a 
few  moments  later,  she  learns  that  on  that  very 
night  Duncan  will  be  under  her  roof,  so  familiar 
and  vivid  had  become  the  image,  that  mentally 
she  commits  the  murder,  and  to  her  over- 
wrought mind  Duncan's  death  is  as  good  as 
accomplished.  More  impulsive  than  Macbeth, 
holding  the  near  and  present  more  closely  in 
her  woman's  intense  one-sided  view,  while  he 
takes  a  wider  range  and  can  weigh  the  pros 
and  cons,  she  is  enabled  to  spur  him  up  to  the 
mark  when  he  falters. 

In  awful  prominence  and  significance  stands 
out  the  moral  of  this  great  poem.  How  the 
crime,  once  committed,  swallows  up  the  whole 
being  of  the  two  criminals  :  its  absorbing  om- 


176  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

nipresence  isolates  each  of  them.  In  planning 
and  doing  the  murder,  what  intimate  union : 
each  could  then  help  the  other.  Now  they  can 
help  each  other  no  more ;  each  is  thrown  upon 
the  sheer  individuality  of  each,  left  alone  with 
his  or  her  soul.  Macbeth  hardens,  Lady  Mac- 
beth breaks.  The  masculine  nature  braces 
itself  to  tougher  sinew,  to  bloodier  doing  ;  the 
feminine  fibre  relaxes  and  gives  way.  Macbeth 
keeps  alone,  restless,  possessed  as  it  were  with 
the  demon  of  murder.  Even  when  talking 
with  his  wife  he  soliloquizes.  This  Continuous 
introspection,  this  unquiet  abstractedness  of 
Macbeth,  is  an  exhibition  of  Shakespeare's 
insight;  of  his  aesthetic  mastery,  unsurpassed 
even  by  himself. 

This  tragedy  is  a  sonorous  sublime  reverber- 
ation, from  the  mighty  brain  of  Shakespeare, 
of  the  protesting  cry  of  nature  and  conscience 
against  murder,  against 

"  The  deep  damnation  of  his  taking  off" 

With  what  fearful  vividness  is  the  crime  de- 
picted by  the  words  and  scenes  which  immedi- 
ately precede  the  act,  by  the  awful  first  effect 
on  Macbeth  of  the  commission,  and  by  the 
accumulating  train  of  terrible  consequences  ! 
Before  the  dread  features  of  the  picture,  the 
mind  recoils  in  consternation. 


XXV. 

HAMLET. 

THERE  is  ground  for  believing  that  Shake- 
speare worked  at  "  Hamlet "  during  several 
years.  Not  that  Shakespeare  was  for  several 
years  exclusively  busy  in  writing  "  Hamlet ; "  but 
that  the  first  draft  was  at  intervals  gradually 
matured  and  expanded  until  the  last  hand  was 
put  to  it  in  1604.  Defective  or  questionable  is, 
in  most  cases,  external  evidence  as  to  the  life 
and  doings  of  Shakespeare ;  but  accumulated  in- 
ternal evidence  proves  that  the  author  of  "  Ham- 
let "  wrought  upon  this  play  more  than  upon  any 
other.  "  Hamlet "  is  the  longest  of  his  dramas, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  most  compressed  ;  its 
scenes  are  more  numerous  than  in  any  other  of 
his  great  tragedies,  and  yet,  in  none  other  will 
you  find  so  many  scenes  throbbing  with  life  and 
significance.  While  for  animation,  apposite- 
ness,  progressiveness,  the  dialogue  is  through- 
out unsurpassed,  there  is  a  larger  number  of 
single  speeches  and  soliloquies  of  Shakespearian 
depth  and  comprehensiveness.  "  Hamlet "  con- 
12 


1/8  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

tains  more  variety  and  more  incident,  together 
with  a  wider  range  of  reason  and  experience, 
than  any  other  drama  ;  more  pregnant  thoughts, 
more  sentences  of  condensed  wisdom,  more 
tender  buds  of  beauty  to  expand  through  all  the 
seasons  of  time  ;  such  profuseness  in  separable 
individualities  of  intellect  and  power,  that  the 
play  would  be  overcharged  with  them,  were 
there  not  in  the  substance  out  of  which  they 
spring,  and  which  they  beautify,  such  depth 
and  breadth  and  warmth  and  meaning,  that 
they  are  borne  up  buoyantly  and  gracefully, 
so  that  the  pages  look  no  more  over-crowded 
than  do  the  heavens  with  the  countless  stars 
they  carry  in  their  interminable  spaces. 

All  these  divers  characteristics  combine  to 
prove  that  the  greatest  tragedy  and  poem  of 
Shakespeare,  and  of  literature,  was  the  product 
of  more  than  usual  labor  and  deliberation,  and 
that,  should  external  evidence  fail  to  make  cer- 
tain that  Shakespeare  had  "  Hamlet"  in  hand  five 
or  six  years,  we  are  authorized  by  these  many 
internal  marks,  supported  as  they  are  by  pretty 
well  established  dates,  to  infer  that  he  wrought 
at  it  during  at  least  three  or  four.  It  is  the 
work  upon  which,  more  than  upon  any  other,  he 
concentrates  himself,  into  which  he  puts  more 


HAMLET, 

of  himself,  when  at  his  best,  and  which  thence 
becomes  the  most  consummate  product  of  his 
genius  and  of  his  judgment,  the  ripest  and 
richest  fruit  of  the  most  poetic  human  soul 
that  ever  was,  the  favorite  of  one  who,  of  the 
priceless  gifts  of  feeling  and  intellect  had  more 
to  give  than  any  other  poet,  and  who  here 
lavished  them,  pouring  upon  "  Hamlet "  in  the 
ecstasy  of  creativeness,  from  the  deeps  of  a 
profound  soul  and  from  the  folds  of  a  vast 
intellect,  his  fairest  stores  of  thought  and 
emotion. 

The  most  necessary  passions  of  the  heart 
are  loaded  with  inextinguishable  fire,  which 
may  explode  in  lurid  bursts,  to  rend  and  con- 
sume the  possessor,  or  may  burn  smoothly,  for 
the  warmth  and  delight  of  his  being.  The  story 
in  "  Hamlet "  involves  them  all,  all  the  great 
primary  loves,  the  parental,  the  filial,  the  fra- 
ternal, the  conjugal ;  and  each  and  every  one 
of  them  is  baffled,  wronged,  wounded,  scathed. 
The  complicated  violence  done  to  one  and  all 
the  chief  personages,  drawing  on  the  poet's 
highest  resources,  swells  to  its  utmost  his  crea- 
tive power,  and  thence  so  fills  with  urgent  life 
every  part  and  page,  that  in  "  Hamlet "  there  are 
almost  no  merely  conjunctive  passages.  The 


ISO  BRIEF  ESSAYS. 

heat  at  the  core  carries  the  drama  along  with  a 
momentum  that  keeps  the  continuity  unrelaxed> 
thus  rendering  unnecessary  those  transition 
scenes,  some  of  which  can  hardly  be  dispensed 
with  even  in  the  most  compact  and  rapid  dra- 
matic evolution.  Fullness  of  life  there  is  al- 
ways in  Shakespeare :  its  brimming  excess 
causes  Hamlet  to  excel  in  what  is  a  cardinal 
power  of  Shakespeare,  and  is  a  token  of  the 
finest  and  largest  mental  wealth,  namely,  the 
typical  quality  of  thoughts  and  sentiments,  and 
of  personages,  these  combining  vital  individu- 
ality with  generic  breadth,  to  a  degree  almost 
surpassing  even  his  usual  achievement  in  com- 
passing this  great  virtue  of  dramatic  charac- 
terization. 

Genuine  idealization,  that  is,  exaltation, 
through  poetic  insight  and  visionary  grasp, 
with  adherence  to  nature  through  fullest  sym- 
pathy with  all  the  promptings  of  the  human 
heart,  this,  a  characteristic  of  Shakespeare  in 
all  his  dramatic  work,  especially  in  contrast 
with  his  dramatic  contemporaries,  is  in  his 
highest  tragedies  exhibited  in  its  supreme 
phase.  In  Lear,  Othello,  Macbeth,  Hamlet, 
there  is  what,  without  rant,  might  be  called 
colossal  idealization.  The  agonies  undergone 


HAMLET.  l8l 

affect  us  so  inordinately  because,  besides  their 
deep  truth  to  nature,  the  strong  hearts  that 
suffer  throb  with  the  pulse  of  the  inordinate 
intellectual  power  imparted  to  them  by  the 
poet.  If  Hamlet  did  not  say  such  great  things 
he  would  long  since  have  been  dismissed  from 
our  intimacy.  And  the  Ghost :  with  what  a 
grand  individuality  he  presents  himself!  A 
specific  personality,  what  a  towering  figure  he 
is. 

Did  it  ever  occur  to  the  reader  that  in  the 
greatest  tragedy,  the  greatest  poem  of  litera- 
ture, a  ghost,  "  the  majesty  of  buried  Den- 
mark," is  the  principal  personage  ?  Prince 
Hamlet  the  chief  actor  in  the  scenes,  the 
protagonist  of  the  play,  is  the  agent  of  the 
Ghost.  Without  the  Ghost  there  had  been  no 
Hamlet.  The  Ghost  not  only  reveals  to  Ham- 
let the  murder,  but  prompts,  nay,  commands 
him  to  avenge  it,  and  thus  controls  the  whole 
action  and  development  of  the  play.  And 
note  how  Shakespeare  shields  this  great  ghost 
from  the  common  charge  against  ghosts,  that 
they  are  diseased  subjectivities,  the  coinage  of 
the  seer's  brain,  not  objective  realities.  He 
first  brings  him  into  the  presence  of  the  two 
sentinels,  Bernardo  and  Marcellus,  and  makes 


1 8  2  BRIEF  ESS  A  VS. 

him  stalk  twice  before  them.  When  these  tell 
Horatio  what  they  have  seen,  he  answers,  'tis 
but  their  fantasy.  Horatio,  the  calm,  philo- 
sophical friend  of  the  prince,  chosen  by  Ham- 
let as  his  confidential  intimate,  because  in  him 

"  The  blood  and  judgment  are  so  well  commingled," 

he  was  just  the  man  to  dissipate  an  illusion  ; 
and  so,  at  the  entreaty  of  Marcellus,  he  comes 
to  the  platform  before  the  palace,  with  them, 
"  to  watch  the  minutes  of  the  night."  When 
there,  as  they  seat  themselves,  that  Marcellus 
may  again  "  assail  his  ears "  with  what  they 
two  nights  have  seen,  Horatio  exclaims, 
"  Tush,  tush  !  'Twill  not  appear."  A  few  mo- 
ments after  he  trembles,  pale  with  fear  and 
wonder,  for  the  Ghost  does  appear  ;  and  as  if 
to  make  assurance  doubly  sure,  after  an  inter- 
val of  five  or  six  minutes,  reenters,  that  all 
three,  seeing  him  once  more  together,  may 
harbor  no  doubt  of  his  visible  reality. 

To  Hamlet  they  report  what  they  have  seen, 
and  nowhere  in  Shakespeare  is  there  dialogue 
more  vital  and  springy,  nowhere  more  of  that 
bound  and  rebound  in  the  quick  interchange  oi 
thought  and  word  between  the  speakers,  which 
is  almost  an  exclusive  property  of  Shakespeare. 
Hamlet  earnestly  prays  them  not  to  reveal  "this 


HAMLET.  183 

sight."  Secrecy  could  have  been  more  surely 
attained  by  the  Ghost's  appearing  to  none  but 
to  Hamlet.  But  then  the  Ghost  would  have 
been  chargeable  with  unsubstantiality,  with 
unreality,  with  being  a  phantom  of  Hamlet's 
morbid  troubled  mind,  and  the  ghostly  element, 
now  so  impressive,  would  have  been  reduced  in 
grandeur.  Shakespeare  was  as  consummate 
in  artistic  judgment  as  he  was  profound  and 
true  in  aesthetic  insight.  When  Horatio  and 
the  others  are  gone,  Hamlet  exclaims  :  — 

"  My  father's  spirit  in  arms  !  all  is  not  well : 
I  doubt  some  foul  play ;  " 

thus  giving  voice  to  a  strong  irrepressible  in- 
stinct of  the  universal  human  heart 

In  the  interview  between  the  Ghost  and 
Hamlet,  what  is  first  to  be  noted  is  the  natural- 
ness of  the  Ghost.  To  the  sentinels  and  Ho- 
ratio he  had  shown  himself  bodily  as  he  was  on 
earth,  so  that  they  knew  him  at  sight.  In  his 
speech  to  Hamlet  he  presents  himself  alive 
with  all  the  feelings  of  the  earthly  man  still 
fresh  upon  him.  Nor  should  we  think  harshly 
of  him,  that  he  prompts  Hamlet  to  slay  the 
adulterate  incestuous  beast  who  had  murdered 
him.  In  this  case  to  revenge  was  to  do  justice, 
which  could  in  no  other  way  be  done.  Hamlet 


I  84  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

beholds  and  listens  to  his  father  as  he  had 
known  him  two  months  before,  only  magnified, 
hallowed,  by  being  transferred  from  the  world 
of  earth  to  the  world  of  spirit.  Nowhere  in 
Shakespeare  are  words  more  alive  than  those 
uttered  by  the  Ghost.  It  is  as  if  there  was  more 
undiluted  soul  in  them  because  the  speaker 
is  free  of  the  hindrances  of  flesh.  The  picture 
of  his  state,  the  description  of  the  seduction 
of  the  Queen,  of  the  poisoning,  how  clear, 
how  actual,  how  transparent,  how  concise.  In 
Shakespeare  —  and  it  is  one  of  the  features  of 
his  greatness  —  the  more  intense  the  action  of 
his  mind,  from  the  earnestness,  warmth,  and 
importance  of  the  utterance,  the  more  sure  is 
there  to  be  illustration,  and  remote  illustration, 
which  would  be  harmful  arrestation,  distracting 
intrusion,  were  there  not  such  a  glow  and  ra- 
pidity that  the  reader  is  helped  and  not  hin- 
dered. Shakespeare's  mind  in  highest  action  is 
so  abounding,  that  it  seems  obliged  to  relieve 
itself  from  the  pressure  of  thoughtful  impor- 
tunity. The  increased  momentum  enlarges 
his  orbit,  and  in  his  fiery  course  he  whirls 
into  his  vortex  new  satellites.  Thus  when  the 
Ghost  hints  at  the  secrets  of  his  prison-house, 
and  says,  but  that  he  is  forbid  to  tell  them,  — 


HAMLET.  185 

"  I  could  a  tale  unfold,  whose  lightest  word 
Would  harrow  up  thy  soul,  freeze  thy  young  blood, 
Make  thy  two  eyes,  like  stars,  start  from  their  spheres, 
Thy  knotted  and  combined  locks  to  part, 
And  each  particular  hair  to  stand  on  end, 
Like  quills  upon  the  fretful  porcupine ." 

A  few  lines  further  Hamlet  exclaims  :  — 

"  Haste  me  to  know  it,  that  I,  with  wings  as  swift 
As  meditation,  or  the  thoughts  of  love, 
May  sweep  to  my  revenge." 

Who  but  Shakespeare  could,  at  such  a  mo- 
ment, without  disturbance,  bring  to  the  mind 
of  the  reader  or  listener  thoughts  of  love  ?  The 
Ghost  answers  :  — 

"  I  find  thee  apt ; 

And  duller  should*  st  thou  be  than  the  fat  weed 
That  rots  itself  in  ease  on  Lethe  wharf, 
Wouldst  thou  not  stir  in  this. " 

Again,  in  depicting  the  seduction  of  the  Queen, 
he  pauses  to  lay  before  the  reader  one  of  those 
golden  fruits  of  meditation,  where  thought  and 
diction  marry  themselves  in  a  cadency  as  of 
heavenly  harps,  which  the  language  garners  up 
as  one  of  its  brightest,  weightiest  treasures  :  — 

"  But  virtue,  as  it  never  will  be  moved, 
Though  lewdness  court  it  in  a  shape  of  heaven, 
So  lust,  though  to  a  radiant  angel  link'd, 
Will  sate  itself  in  a  celestial  bed, 
And  prey  on  garbage." 

In  the  impartings  of  the  Ghost  to   Hamlet, 


1 86  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

there  is  a  grandeur,  a  weightiness,  a  depth  of 
earnestness,  that  befit  the  revealments  of  a 
wronged  and  murdered  king. 

The  significance,  the  awakening  impressive- 
ness,  the  awe  of  the  opening  scene  in  "  Ham- 
let," is  in  fullest  keeping  with  the  dread  beauty, 
the  lustrous  depths  of  Shakespeare's  foremost 
drama.  What  tingling  life  in  every  line  !  What 
a  sudden  bursting  asunder  of  the  veil  between 
the  world  of  sense  and  the  world  of  spirit ! 
In  an  instant  we  are  translated  to  realms  un- 
earthly. We  feel  ourselves  shuddering  in  the 
spectral  mist  which  enfolds  the  Ghost,  rapt 
away  from  earth  to  spheres  untrodden.  And 
the  latter  part  of  the  second  scene,  what  a  vivid 
reproduction  it  is  of  the  first ! 

The  best  commentators,  even  Goethe  and 
Coleridge,  insist  that  a  general  moral  purpose 
presided  at  the  creation  of  Hamlet.  True  it  is 
that  "  We  have  here  an  oak  planted  in  a  costly 
vase,  fit  only  to  receive  lovely  flowers  within 
its  bosom ;  the  roots  spread  and  burst  the 
vase."  True,  that  there  is  in  "Hamlet"  a  want 
of  "balance  between  our  attention  to  the  ob- 
jects of  our  senses  and  our  meditation  on  the 
workings  of  our  minds."  But  that  Shakespeare 
wrote  "  Hamlet"  to  "  exemplify  the  moral  neces- 


HAMLET.  IS/ 

sity  "  of  such  a  balance,  as  Coleridge  believes  ; 
or  that  he  designed  to  show  the  effect  of  "a 
great  deed  enjoined  on  an  inferior  mind,"  as 
Goethe  affirms,  this  seems  to  me  to  be  making 
Shakespeare  drive  a  shaft  for  the  water  of 
life  into  the  plain  of  the  mere  understanding, 
whence  no  rich  poetic  current  could  gain  mo- 
mentum to  gush  ;  a  procedure,  is  it  not,  —  I  ask 
in  all  deference  to  these  two  great  poets  and 
critics,  —  inconsistent  with  high  aesthetic  prin- 
ciples, principles  which  both  of  themselves  have 
done  much  to  establish  by  precept  as  by  prac- 
tice. 

If  the  poet  has  not  within  him  strong, 
healthy,  moral  sensibilities  to  dominate,  half 
unconsciously,  his  whole  work,  all  such  purpose 
will  be  futile  and  will  fail ;  and  if  these  sen- 
sibilities be  the  staple  of  his  being  (as  they 
must  be  in  a  great  dramatic  poet),  the  placing 
before  himself  such  purpose  will  be,  not  merely 
superfluous,  but  obstructive  and  depressive,  I 
might  almost  say,  depletive. 

To  believe  that  Shakespeare  had  primarily 
in  his  mind  a  specific  moral  plan,  through  which 
he  aimed  in  Hamlet  to  set  forth  the  operation 
of  certain  mental  compounds,  were  to  make  the 
clear-sighted  poet  put  the  cart  before  the  horse. 


1 8  8  BRIEF  ESS  A  YS. 

This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  Shakespeare's  pro- 
cedure :  He  seized  upon  a  theme  pregnant  with 
passion,  capable  of  impressive  presentation,  and 
in  unfolding  the  characters  that  give  to  such 
a  theme  its  weight  and  purport,  that  make  it 
indeed  possible,  he  drew  them  or  fed  them  out 
of  his  own  profound  warm  intuitions,  intuitions 
which  had  been  cultivated  and  concreted  by  a 
sure  active  observation. 

The  lowest  foundation  on  which  the  dra- 
matic edifice  is  raised  is  not  laid  down  before- 
hand, but  lay  ready  in  the  depths  of  his  own 
moral  nature,  in  the  same  depths  whence  he 
drew  the  material  for  the  construction  ;  just  as 
if  you  were  to  rear  a  solid  gorgeous  palace  on 
a  mountain  of  Carara,  the  compact  marble,  on 
which  the  base  of  the  building  would  rest, 
furnishes  the  materials  for  the  superstructure. 
In  creating  Hamlet  Shakespeare  had  no  special 
moral  aim.  In  this,  as  in  all  his  great  tragedies, 
there  is  a  deep  sound  moral,  deeper,  it  may 
be,  than  in  any  other,  there  being  in  no  other 
such  portentous  and  manifold  collisions,  collis- 
ions in  which  the  great  poet  shows  his  highest 
greatness  by  working  them  out  in  healthy  har- 
mony with  providential  wisdom.  Hamlet  was 
brought  into  being  for  Hamlet's  own  sake  ;  and, 


HAMLET.  189 

breathing  and  moving  before  us  in  fresh  pal- 
pitating life,  his  fellow  men,  by  intimately  con- 
sorting with  him,  can  ever  strengthen  their 
moral  as  well  as  their  intellectual  being. 


BREVITIES. 


BREVITIES. 
I. 

SPIRITUAL,    MORAL. 

OUR  habitation,  the  Earth,  is  not  self-sub- 
sisting ;  it  moves  in  dependence  on  a  fiery  orb 
far  distant:  the  Sun's  light  helps  to  feed  the 
breath  of  our  bodies.  And  shall  we  from  the 
soil  beneath  our  feet,  from  the  dust  into  which 
our  bodies  dissolve,  draw  the  breath  of  our 
souls  ?  If  millions  of  miles  off  is  one  of  the 
chief  sustainers  of  our  flesh,  where  should  we 
look  for  the  source  of  the  spirit  we  feel  within 
us  ? 

The  ideas  of  eternity  and  infinity  are  innate 
in  the  human  mind  as  attractions  towards  per- 
fection, as  indications  and  promises  of  incal- 
culable progression  and  elevation. 

Religion  needs  to  be  purified  and  steadied 
by  culture  and  science. 
13 


194  BREVITIES. 

We  must  be  realists,  not  dreamers :  we  must 
found  our  convictions  on  facts,  not  on  imagina- 
tions which  are  dreamlike.  Nothing  is  nobler 
than  facts.  Facts  are  God's  ;  imaginations 
are  man's,  and  are  only  godlike,  when  they  en- 
fold coming  or  possible  facts,  or  adorn  existing 
ones. 

Widely  and  kindly  around  us  should  we  look 
as  well  as  inwardly  and  upwardly,  or  we  leave 
untenanted  some  of  the  heart's  best  chambers. 
Our  breasts  are  large  enough  to  entertain  mul- 
titudes, and  only  when  thus  rilled  is  our  daily 
life  a  blessing. 

The  increasing  delight  in  natural  scenery  is 
one  of  the  proofs  that  man  is  growing  nearer 
to  God. 

Possibly  the  mind  cannot,  in  its  most  hope- 
ful and  its  most  far-reaching  imaginations,  out- 
run its  capabilities.  Were  it  a  law  of  being 
that  the  most  fabulous  flowers,  unfolded  in  the 
sun  of  the  heart's  warmest  day-dreams,  contain 
the  seeds  of  substantial  realities  ! 

Just   ideas   are   the  only  source  of  healthy 


SPIRITUAL,  MORAL.  195 

moral  life.  By  them  institutions  are  moulded, 
and  to  uphold  institutions  which  ideas  have 
outgrown,  is  to  be  destructive,  not  conserva- 
tive. They  are  the  best  benefactors  of  their 
race  who  can  discern  and  apply  the  deepest 
ideas  ;  and  thus  the  boldest  reformer  may  be 
the  truest  conservative. 

To  see  things  as  they  are,  one  must  have 
sympathy  with  the  spirit  of  God,  whence  all 
things  come.  Then  can  be  discerned  to  what 
degree  there  is  remoteness  from  divine  design, 
and  thus  actual  conditions  be  rightly  judged. 

When  you  build  selfishly,  you  build  frailly. 
When  your  acts  are  hostile  to  the  broad  in- 
terests of  your  fellow-men,  they  are  seed  that 
will  one  day  come  up  weeds,  to  choke  your 
own  harvest-field. 

One  has  at  times  a  desire  to  cast  away  all 
the  petty  memories  and  imaginations  that  cling 
around  self,  and  to  bound  off  into  the  empy- 
rium  of  the  Universal.  Thus  disencumbered, 
the  Intellect  and  the  Soul  might  make  great 
discoveries.  Is  not  this  the  secret  of  the  clear- 
seeing  glances  of  some  of  the  mesmerized, 


196  BREVITIES. 

that  they  are  emancipated  from  the  bonds  of 
self,  and  for  the  time  lifted  out  of  the  obscuri- 
ties of  fleshly  life,  into  the  translucent  sphere 
of  the  disembodied  ? 

Beliefs  imply  non-beliefs.  Creeds  are  com- 
pounded mainly  of  negations.  1852. 

Religion  is  the  binding  of  the  human  mind 
to  the  invisible.  A  man  is  religious  in  pro- 
portion to  the  fullness  wherewith  he  acknowl- 
edges this  bond  and  to  the  degree  in  which 
his  life  conforms  to  the  conditions  implied  in 
that  acknowledgment 

Humanity  is  ever  yearning  and  struggling 
for  its  higher  life.  Religion,  love,  truth,  jus- 
tice, liberty,  these  it  instinctively  seeks,  gets 
first  glimpses  of,  then  views  broader  and  less 
dim,  then  exalting  convictions  of  the  possi- 
bility of  lifting  its  life  into  their  dominion. 

Most  people  are  Christians  by  inheritance, 
not  by  acquisition  ;  involuntary  Christians,  not 
Christians  by  will,  individual  feeling,  and  deed. 

Sin   came  into  the  world,  not  through  the 


SPIRITUAL,  MORAL.  197 

Devil,  but  through  a  nearer  approach  to  God. 
It  is  darkness  made  visible  by  light.  Before 
the  light,  no  one  knew  of  the  darkness  or  felt 
it.  Savages  are  not  sinful.  Sin  is  especially 
Christian,  because  the  unfolding  of  the  higher 
nature,  through  genuine  Christianity,  so  raises 
the  standard  of  life,  that  the  lower  nature  is 
rebuked,  as  it  was  not  before,  becoming  thus 
not  only  conscious  of  sin,  but  sinful ;  for  until 
there  was  the  higher  light,  the  lower  nature 
deserved  not  condemnation  for  its  low  deeds, 
these  being  then  not  measurable  by  the  doer. 

The  wish  to  be  free  must  not  be  confounded 
with  a  longing  for  exemption  from  restraint 
on  appetite  and  willfulness,  for  such  longing 
points  downward  ;  whereas,  desire  for  freedom 
is  a  striving  upward. 

People  selfishly  ambitious  think  they  are 
mounting  a  ladder ;  whereas,  with  every  round 
they  touch  they  get  lower,  each  step  carrying 
them  further  from  the  zenith  of  innocence. 

Socrates  denounced  as  the  most  fatal  of  con- 
ditions, "  the  conceit  of  knowledge  without  the 
reality." 


198  BREVITIES. 

A  fruit  of  partial  mental  development,  of 
ignorance,  and  somewhat  of  arrogance,  a  fruit 
of  the  tree  of  evil,  still  much  eaten  and  relished, 
is,  that  men  strive  to  guide  themselves  by  their 
imaginations  and  inventions  and  conventions, 
instead  of  by  Nature's  laws  and  precepts  ;  that 
is,  by  the  shallow  and  mutable,  the  fragmentary 
and  fugitive,  instead  of  by  the  deep,  the  com- 
plete, the  perennial.  To  pride,  coupled  with 
one-sidedness,  much  easier  is  it  to  imagine  and 
presume  than  to  discover  and  obey. 

To  found  your  faith  on  dogmas,  conceptions, 
imaginations,  instead  of  seeking  truth  through 
meditative  investigation,  with  direct,  earnest, 
conscientious  search,  is  as  though  a  mariner, 
instead  of  looking  to  the  sun  and  stars,  should 
strive  to  guide  his  ship  by  the  clouds,  which 
are  but  shifting  exhalations  from  the  very  sea 
whereon  he  is  tossed. 

The  simplicity  and  fewness  of  the  physical 
elements  wherewith,  in  the  mineral,  vegetable, 
and  animal  kingdoms,  are  compounded  such  . 
countless  varieties  and  degrees  of  life,  prove 
the  immense  activity,  resource,  and  sovereignty 
of  the  immaterial  soul  that  wields  and  welds 
them. 


SPIRITUAL,  MORAL.  199 

True  religion  develops  and  deepens  the  con- 
science :  it  helps  the  heart  both  to  be  just  and 
charitable. 

Think  of  the  exultation,  tinged  with  a  blush, 
there  must  be  in  the  thought  of  one,  a  purified 
spirit,  who  looks  back  to  earth  to  see  there  her 
name  still  linked  to  shame  for  deeds  done  in 
the  flesh,  which  novjr  her  soul  has  repented  of 
and  purged  away. 

A  lively  sense  of  moral  responsibility  neces- 
sarily involves  dutifulness  to  our  fellow-men, 
and  thence  dependence  on  them,  and  is  the 
firmest,  deepest,  broadest,  most  indispensable 
foundation  for  individual  worth  and  social  well- 
being. 

Some  people  seem  to  think  that  all  religion 
is  shut  up  in  churches.  They  might  as  reason- 
ably believe  that  all  vital  air  is  shut  up  in 
parlors  and  chambers.  What  is  so  shut  up 
soon  gets  foul,  and,  unless  daily  refreshed  from 
the  great  natural  reservoir,  breeds  disease  and 
death. 

The  dog  and  the  elephant  are  finitely  cir- 


200  BREVITIES. 

cumscribed :  they  have  no  above  and  beyond. 
To  live  consciously  amid  the  unseen  and  the 
unknown  is  the  sublime  privilege  of  man. 

The  attempt  to  know  the  Infinite,  were  a 
most  futile  misdirection  of  human  faculties. 
As  well  attempt  to  perceive  melodious  sounds 
by  the  eye.  Ideas  of  God  come  to  us  only 
through  our  emotions.  Reason  about  what 
the  emotions  furnish  we  can  profitably  ;  but 
most  unprofitable  is  the  attempt  by  reason  to 
weigh,  define,  and  fathom  what,  being  purely 
objects  of  emotion,  can  neither  be  defined  nor 
fathomed. 

Only  when  religious  organizations  are  sources 
of  intellectual  culture  and  schools  of  instruction, 
do  they  a  high  service.  A  priest  or  minister 
of  religion  who  is  a  dullard  is  of  no  account. 
The  religious  sentiment,  being  innate  in  man, 
manifests  itself  in  all  times  and  latitudes  ;  but 
that  its  spirituality  have  scope  it  needs  union 
with  intellect  and  moral  thought. 

The  power  of  the  Bible  is  in  its  cordiality. 

Shame  is  a  veil  thrown  by  the  spiritual  man 
over  the  animal  man. 


SPIRITUAL,  MORAL.  2OI 

In  early  manhood  some  souls  get  locked  up 
in  ecclesiastical  prisons,  and  the  bolts  rusting 
from  the  stale  exhalations  of  stagnant  theolo- 
gies, the  prisoners  languish  their  lives  out  in 
spiritual  chains. 

Curs  yelp  at  the  sage  as  loudly  as  at  the 
thief. 

A  pity  when  men  do  not  grow  into  light  as 
they  grow  old,  but  mostly  grope  in  a  still  colder 
darkness. 


No  man  who  has  a  humane  spirit,  and  leads 
a  practical  life,  but  will  be  often  an  uncruci- 
fied  martyr,  so  saddened  will  he  be,  and  some- 
times excruciated  by  the  vice  and  suffering  and 
anguish  and  injustice  and  inhumanity  around 
him  ;  unless,  like  Oberlin,  he  withdraws  into 
the  mountains  amid  a  primitive  people,  and 
thus  restricts  his  life  and  his  experience. 

The  most  fearful  thing  in  life  is  the  dread  ot 
death  ;  and  this  dread  which  theologies  have 
fostered,  is  getting  dispelled  by  Spiritualism. 

We  do  not  value,  or  even  know,  our  inward 


2O2  BREVITIES. 

worth  and  sacredness  :  we  waste  ourselves  on 
the  outward. 

Truth  is  a  fruit  that  ever  hangs  ripening 
above  us,  expectant  of  our  harvesting. 

There  are  words  and  doings  so  intensely 
natural  that  they  seem  supernatural. 

The  dear  ones  gone  are  living  links  between 
us  and  heaven. 

Think  of  the  interminable  lengths  of  human 
relations  in  time  and  space ! 

The  glass  is  not  worn  out  by  your  looking 
through  it ;  nor  is  the  soul. 

Some  men  despair  of  the  future ;  as  if  God, 
Nature,  and  Humanity  were  at  the  end  of  their 
tether ;  as  if  Providence  had  in  its  hand  no 
more  trumps. 

In  the  Stoic  philosophy  Physics  and  Theol- 
ogy, or  the  study  of  the  nature  of  things  and  the 
divine  government  of  the  Universe,  went  wisely 
together.  Nature,  —  including  in  the  term  all 


SPIRITUAL,  MORAL.  203 

that  is  cognizable  by  man,  all  physical,  physio- 
logical, intellectual,  psychical  phenomena  and 
laws,  — Nature,  in  this  full  sense,  is  the  Book 
of  God,  a  bible  direct  from  his  hand,  not  liable 
to  erasure,  interpolation,  or  falsification.  Our 
printed  Bible  is  at  second  hand,  through  human 
organs,  colored  by  the  minds  through  which 
the  revelations  passed.  Nature  is  an  ever- 
present,  daily,  living,  teeming,  beautiful,  signif- 
icant, prolific,  incorruptible  revelation. 

Oh,  the  curse  of  egotism,  the  deadly  poison 
of  self-seeking  !  A  man  is  but  the  fraction  of 
a  man,  until  he  goes  out  of  himself. 

Creation  is  goodness  in  its  most  forceful 
phasis.  To  create  is  to  be  beneficent :  to 
bring  into  being,  to  launch  upon  the  boundless 
sea  of  life,  is  the  highest  act  of  love.  Thence, 
to  do  acts  of  love,  genuine  acts,  is  to  be  crea- 
tive. Every,  even  the  smallest  kindness  we 
do,  is  to  work  in  harmony  with,  and  in  further- 
ance of,  the  divine  creative  energy. 

I  have  on  my  mind  an  image,  brought  from 
far  childhood,  of  a  rude  woodcut,  representing 
a  man  half  buried  in  the  ground  and  struggling 


204  BREVITIES. 

to  get  out.  What  was  typified  I  cannot  recall  ; 
but  I  am  reminded  of  this  picture  by  contrast 
when  I  see  people  and  communities  half  buried 
in  animalism  and  conventionalism,  who  are  not 
struggling  to  get  out,  but  sit  in  as  much  con- 
tentment as  people  can  sit  who,  with  all  their 
self-satisfaction,  can  never  utterly  stifle  the 
meanings  of  the  soul  in  its  slavery. 

A  man's  well-being  is  only  then  attained 
when  he  is  in  upward  movement,  the  human 
organization  being  happily  such  that  his  ten- 
dency and  necessity  is,  to  be  always  changing, 
and,  when  in  sound  condition,  to  be  always 
ascending. 

The  maxims  of  La  Rochefoucauld  are  an 
impertinence  to  humanity. 

The  Bible  is  the  wisest  companion  and  guide 
that  men  have  had  in  their  darkened  pathways 
through  the  ages.  Beheld  in  comparison  with 
the  consecrated  books  of  other  Peoples,  the 
Bible  glistens.  That  men  are  now  getting  dis- 
satisfied with  much  of  it,  and  have  begun  to 
criticize  it,  is  a  sign  that  their  path  is  less 
dark. 


SPIRITUAL,  MORAL.  205 

So  late  as  the  fifth  century  the  heathen 
gods  arid  Jesus  were  publicly  adored  in  the 
same  town.  In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
is  there  any  word  about  adoration,  or  about 
worship  by  the  help  of  priests  ?  The  whole 
system  of  worship  as  now  almost  universally 
practiced  in  Christendom  is  of  heathen  origin. 
Is  there  not,  in  formal  outward  worship,  an  in- 
evitable materialism,  which  arrests  and  absorbs 
spirituality. 

Sir  Thomas  Browne  calls  the  soul,  "  that 
translated  divinity  and  colony  of  God." 

The  greatest  gift  to  man,  from  God  the  giver, 
is  love  of  truth. 

It  is  because  the  life  beyond  the  earth-life  is 
of  such  immeasurable  importance  to  man,  that 
in  his  less  developed  stages  he  has  been  a  prey 
to  priestcraft.  Priests,  pretending  to  be  the 
privileged  interpreters  of  the  divine,  have  made 
man  believe  that  they  hold  the  keys  to  the  pas- 
sage which  leads  to  the  mysterious  future. 

To  purge  the  world  of  lies,  this  is  the  great 
achievement  of  progress,  —  progress  being  the 


206  BREVITIES. 

effort  of  life  to  shelter  itself  under  more  and 
more  truth.  Theology,  being  based,  not  on 
high  facts  and  absolute  truth,  but  on  man's 
fancies  and  changeful  opinions  and  even  preju- 
dices, has  done  much,  in  its  obstinate  limita- 
tions, to  keep  men  false.  Church-votaries  it 
has  filled  with  self-righteousness  and  hypoc- 
risy. 

Confucius  said :  "  An  ocean  of  invisible  in- 
telligences surrounds  us." 

With  semi-animal  imaginations  people  figure 
up  a  sum  which  they  call  Deity,  and  then  strive 
to  believe  that  their  deepest,  noblest  thoughts 
and  emotions,  and  their  whole  being,  are  but 
fractions  of  this  sum.  "Pis  as  though  they 
were  to  stretch  into  the  air  a  fantastic  appa- 
ratus of  wheels  and  pulleys,  and  to  strive  there- 
with to  sway  the  motion  of  the  earth.  The 
only  strength  such  an  apparatus  could  have 
would  come  from  the  earth  whereon  it  rests. 
Out  of  yourself  you  stretch  wires  towards 
Heaven,  and  then  you  persuade  yourselves  that 
they  have  been  stretched  from  Heaven  towards 
you  ;  and  by  the  pulling  of  these  wires  you 
would  direct  your  life.  Who  are  the  wire-pull- 


SPIRITUAL,  MORAL. 

ers  is  as  easy  here  to  discern  as  in  political 
jugglery.  The  proceeding  is  contrary  to  eter- 
nal law:  it  is  an  attempt  to  subordinate  dy- 
namics to  mechanics. 

The  one  only  thing  that  is  is  truth :  what- 
ever is  not  true  is  not. 

How  were  it  if  Copernicus,  or  some  other, 
had  not  upset  the  Ptolemaic  misbelief  about 
the  solar  system,  to  which  the  Church  held 
so  obstinately  ?  Goethe  looked  upon  the  dis- 
covery of  the  revolution  of  the  Earth  round 
the  Sun  as  the  greatest,  most  sublime,  ever 
made  by  man ;  as  boundless  as  beneficent  in 
its  consequences. 

The  men  who  lead  a  second,  inner,  higher 
life  are  they  who  fecundate  their  age  and  the 
minds  of  other  men  in  after  ages.  Only  from 
this  inner  perennial  spring  flow  streams  of 
spiritual  and  intellectual  wealth  to  enrich  man- 
kind with  deposits  from  their  currents. 


II. 

LITERARY,   jESTHETICAL. 

POETRY  is  not  put  into  verse  to  please  the 
ear :  it  is  in  verse  because  it  is  the  offspring 
of  a  spirit  akin  to  that  which  dwells  ever  in 
hearing  of  the  music  of  the  spheres.  To 
poetry,  rhythm  is  as  natural  as  symmetry  to 
a  beautiful  face.  Genuine  verse  delights  the 
capable  ear,  because,  like  the  voice  of  child- 
hood or  of  woman,  it  is  in  itself  delightful. 
Why  does  the  setting  sun,  a  lively  landscape, 
a  worthy  deed,  give  enjoyment  ?  Because  they 
speak  to,  and  are  in  harmony  with,  our  higher 
being ;  and  so  is  poetry,  and  therefore  it  too 
gives  enjoyment.  But  to  say,  that  the  object 
of  poetry  is  to  please,  ranks  it  with  the  shallow 
presentations  of  the  showman. 

The  Poet  is  an  apostle  of  truth ;  and  the 
false  can  never  be  poetry. 

A  good  book  is  a  distillation. 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL.  2Og 

In  poetry  much  of  the  meaning  is  conveyed 
by  the  sound.  Transpose  the  words  of  a  fine 
passage,  and  you  impair  its  import. 

In  the  style  of  Shakespeare  there  is  oceanic 
undulation.  In  that  of  Corneille  and  Racine 
the  surface  is  level,  or  if  broken,  it  is  not  with 
billows. 

A  sonnet  should  be  like  a  spring,  clear  and 
deep  in  proportion  to  its  surface ;  and  like  a 
whirlpool,  in  a  certain  silent  self-involved  move- 
ment. 

Shakespeare's  words,  when  boldest  and  rich- 
est, are  but  ambassadors,  behind  whom  there 
is  a  greater  than  themselves  :  Racine's  and 
Alfieri's,  though  not  so  erect  and  gorgeous, 
are  the  kings  themselves  ;  they  leave  nothing 
untold,  and  give  no  impulse  to  the  imagination. 

Good  rhetoric  is  a  good  thing  in  a  good 
cause. 

Rhymes  should  sit  as  lightly  on   verse  as 
flowers  on  plants. 
14 


210  BREVITIES. 

In  English  Prose  where  is  there  a  diction 
so  copious,  apt,  forceful  as  Carlyle's,  at  once  so 
transparent  with  poetic  light  and  so  compact 
with  a  home-driving,  idiomatic  solidity,  doing 
the  errand  of  a  thoughtful  fervent  nature  with 
such  fullness  and  emphasis  ? 

Goethe  goes  out  of  himself  into  the  being 
of  nature  and  of  other  men  :  Wordsworth  takes 
their  being  up  into  himself.  These  two  poets 
illustrate  sharply  the  difference  between  the 
objective  and  the  subjective. 

In  the  plainest  of  Wordsworth's  many  hun- 
dred sonnets  there  is  more  or  less  of  the  fra- 
grance of  high  humanity. 

Some  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  is,  as  his  per- 
son was,  too  gaunt :  it  wants  a  fuller  clothing 
of  flesh. 

A  fit  ideal  embodiment  of  the  Artist  were 
a  countenance  upraised,  beaming,  eager,  joyful, 
moulded  with  somewhat  of  feminine  mobility. 

Thought  is  ever  unfolding :  a  good  thinker 
keeps  thinking. 


LITERARY,  MSTHETICAL.  2 1 1 

To  write  a  good  literary  book,  whatever  the 
subject,  requires  the  "  instinct  of  the  beauti- 
ful." 

Music  is  a  marriage  of  the  sensual  with  the 
spiritual :  each  is  merged  in  the  other.  In 
perfect  harmony  there  will  be  neither  sensual 
nor  spiritual,  but  the  two  will  be  made  one  in 
the  fullness  of  life  and  purity. 

We  talk  of  this  man's  style  and  that  man's, 
when,  rightly  speaking,  neither  of  them  has  a 
style.  Style  implies  a  substantial  body  of  self- 
evolved  thought.  Now,  from  so  few  minds 
come  fresh  emanations,  that  most  writings  are 
but  old  matter  re-worded,  current  thought 
re-dressed.  Each  one's  individual  mode  of 
re-wording  and  re-dressing  is,  and  should  be 
called,  his  manner,  not  his  style.  In  Writing 
as  in  Painting,  every  man,  the  weakest  as  well 
as  the  strongest,  must  have  a  manner  ;  but  few 
can  have  a  style.  1852. 

I  write  the  opinion  with  diffidence,  but  to 
me  it  seems  that  Italian  poetry  wants  depth : 
its  roots  are  not  sunk  in  the  soil :  too  much  of 
it  is  but  ornamented  versification.  Dante  bor- 


212  BREVITIES. 

rows  from  or  imitates  the  Latin  poets  on  every 
page.  Petrarca's  sonnets  are  as  much  an  em- 
bodiment of  what  is  called  Platonic  love  as 
of  passion  for  Laura.  In  Ariosto  there  is 
abundant  fancy,  but  little  poetic  imagination. 
Alfieri's  horizon  is  definite  and  earthly ;  it 
does  not  stretch  into  the  infinite. 

In  the  "  Divina  Comedia,"  the  supernatural 
is  not  the  framework  merely  of  the  Poem,  it 
is  the  chief  constituent  of  its  essence.  In  the 
plaint  of  Francesca,  in  the  beatitudes  of  Bea- 
trice, pathos  and  beauty  are  emblazoned  by 
the  glow  from  a  supersolar  sphere.  To  show 
them,  and  a  crowd  of  other  personages,  alive 
in  transterrestrial  being,  throbbing  with  human 
feelings,  demands  a  poet  of  sensibilities  rich 
and  tender,  and  of  graphic  intellect.  But  the 
launching  of  the  whole  beyond  the  earth-orbit, 
this  it  is  that  sustains  it  and  makes  it  poetical 
as  a  whole  and  in  its  multifarious  details.  As 
narrative  of  man's  sorrows  and  joys  while  in 
the  flesh,  it  were  prosaic.  The  super-earthly 
firmament  lends  light  to  the  picture.  But  for 
the  supernal  plane  whereon  every  line  rolls,  and 
to  which  the  reader  is  imaginatively  lifted,  the 
words,  just  as  they  stand,  would  be  flat  and 
opaque  in  nineteen  lines  out  of  twenty. 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL.  21$ 

The  men  of  letters  who  are  contempo- 
raneously overrated,  are  the  men  of  talent. 
Men  of  genius  are  liable  not  to  be  rated  high 
enough  in  their  generation.  More  accurate 
were  it  to  say,  that  men  of  genius  can  be  ap- 
preciated only  by  the  few  ;  while  men  of  talent, 
being  within  reach  of  the  many,  are  by  them 
self-complacently  exaggerated. 

The  vice  of  written  histories  is,  that  they 
are  not  History. 

Goethe's  profound  title  to  his  Autobiography, 
"  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit,"  Imagination  and 
Truth,  would  be  appropriate  for  every  biog- 
raphy, memoir,  or  history  that  ever  was  writ- 
ten. 

Only  the  men  who  can  originate  are  fully 
competent  judges  of  what  has  been  originated 
and  done.  Talent  alone  can  never  make  a 
thorough  critic.  For  that  enough  genius  is 
needed  to  sympathize  with  genius. 

A  beautiful  face  is  fascinating  more  by  what  it 
promises  than  by  what  it  is.  To  the  beholder 
corporeal  beauty  suggests  all  other  beauty. 


214  BREVITIES. 

When  first  gazing  on  a  beautiful  person,  what 
an  impertinence  were  a  thought  of  his  or  her 
moral  deformity.  On  the  physical  basis  im- 
agination builds  all  other  perfections. 

A  fictitious  story,  to  be  worth  attention, 
should  have  a  heart  in  it,  and  be  artfully  un- 
folded, and  be  supported,  not  on  slender  tem- 
porary timbers,  but  on  solid  arches  of  thought 
and  imagination. 

True  Art  helps  and  upholds  the  higher  part 
of  our  nature :  the  lower  being  aggressive, 
needs  check  not  spur.  The  ideal  involves  ele- 
vation through  emotion  ;  and  emotion,  being 
caused  by  a  stir  of  the  unselfish  feelings,  is 
always  purifying.  There  is  no  Art  without 
some  breath  of  the  ideal. 

Poetry  is  the  aromatic  essence  of  life. 

The  imagination  unites,  orbs,  several  into 
one  :  the  fancy  divides  and  individualizes. 

Thackeray  and  Dickens  are  so  popular  in 
England  (and  America  ?)  on  account  of  their 
thoroughly  English  natures,  both  being  some- 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL.  21$ 

what  material  and  matter-of-fact,  with  a  strong 
earthy  flavor,  and  not  finely  imaginative. 

Some  minds  are  filters  of  other  men's 
thoughts.  They  add  nothing :  they  clarify 
what  passes  through  their  pens. 

The  motion  of  a  deciduous  cypress  illus- 
trates grace.  Under  a  breeze  the  whole  stem 
sways,  animating  every  branch  and  spray  with 
its  own  slow,  stately,  reserved  movement,  which 
seems  to  come  from  within. 

To  those  critics  who,  totally  lacking  poetic 
imagination,  yet  pretend  to  a  fine  ear  in  poetry, 
may  be  applied  a  "  thought "  of  Pascal :  "  On 
ne  consulte  que  1'oreille,  parcequ'on  manque 
de  co2ur."  And  the  want  of  soul  makes  the 
ear  untrustworthy. 

The  sun-fired  focus  of  a  lens  consumes  pa- 
per or  wood,  but  falling  on  a  diamond,  makes 
it  sparkle  the  more.  So  with  books,  under 
the  focus  of  genuine  criticism. 

Some  poets  one  outgrows.  Scott,  Moore, 
Campbell,  even  Byron,  if  I  read  them  now  at 


2l6  BREVITIES. 

all,  I  read  momentarily.  Their  verse  is  not 
deep  enough,  not  compact  enough  with  mind, 
that  in  maturer  years  we  be  enlightened  by 
it,  and  thence  delighted  with  it.  Beneath  the 
web  of  incident  and  sentiment  and  passion, 
there  is  not  warp  enough  of  thought.  Their 
pages  are  not  enduringly  suggestive.  Dimmed 
to  the  eye  of  manhood  is  the  brilliancy  they 
shone  in  to  the  eye  of  youth.  Their  words 
are  too  little  swollen  from  inward  sources  of 
sensibility  that  many  lines  should  glisten  with 
inexhaustible  meaning,  as  in  Wordsworth,  Cole- 
ridge, Shelley.  Keats  died  at  twenty-five,  and 
yet,  to  men  past  sixty  he  is  fresh,  freshening. 

There  are  writers  whose  minds  have  no  hori- 
zon :  they  do  not  let  you  see  far,  but  keep  your 
looks  on  near  objects  and  on  bounded  pros- 
pects. 

The  best  business  of  the  poet  is,  to  spin 
golden  threads  between  earth  and  heaven. 

No  high  literature  can  be  produced  or  en- 
joyed but  through  delight  in  the  true  and  the 
beautiful. 


LITERAR Y,  &STHETICAL.  2 1  / 

A  great  function  of  sensibility  to  the  beau- 
tiful is,  to  be  ever  prompting  a  better,  finer 
something  not  yet  attained. 

In  theatric  pieces  common  reality  is  every- 
where copied  ;  hence  flatness,  and  a  necessity 
for  accidents  and  extravagances,  monstrosities 
even,  to  keep  alive  a  sensuous  attention.  The 
Stage  should  always  be  ideal,  in  the  sense  that 
Shakespeare  is  ideal,  that  is,  it  should  present 
the  real  exalted,  spiritualized.  Literal  repro- 
duction is  low  literature. 

To  the  poet  who  is  a  thinker,  to  Wordsworth 
or  Goethe  or  Shelley  or  Dante  or  Coleridge, 
metaphysical  speculation,  if  he  chooses  to  give 
in  to  it,  is  an  unbending.  Nothing  draws  upon 
the  mental  life  like  poetic  creation. 

One  of  the  great  disappointments  in  Litera- 
ture is  the  coming  upon  the  stars  which  show 
that  the  "  Hyperion  "  of  Keats  is  a  fragment. 

Shelley  balloons  it  too  much.  He  ascends 
easily,  gracefully,  and  then  is  swayed  by  scented 
breezes  from  an  exuberant  imagination.  It  had 
been  a  gain  could  he  oftener  have  dipped  his 


2l8  BREVITIES. 

mind  deeper  into  the  core  of  common  things. 
He  has  too  much  elevation  and  not  enough 
depth,  —  that  is,  not  enough  depth  for  his  ele- 
vation. 

An  elderly  poet,  who  has  written  chiefly  out 
of  his  fancy  and  memory,  and  whose  borrow- 
ings are  not  the  worst  of  him,  may  be  called 
an  exhausted  receiver. 

The  pages  of  some  writers,  like  the  discourse 
of  some  men,  are  prickly  with  self-conceit. 

The  first  question  to  ask  of  a  new  book  is  — 
Does  it  give  out  new  light  ?  Are  novel  aspects 
won  from  old  things  ?  or,  better  still,  is  it  racy 
with  original  views  and  principles  ? 

Men  who  have  not  the  mental  largeness  or 
spiritual  momentum  to  go  out  of  themselves, 
who  cannot  lift  them  reverently  towards  a 
greater  than  themselves,  are  liable,  if  intellect- 
ual, to  be  pantheists.  By  this  opaque  doctrine 
they  are  blinded  to  believe  that  they  are  a 
part  of  the  Godhead,  in  the  sense  of  being 
identical  with  Deity.  Whatever  they  may 
think,  they  do  but  shut  themselves  into  them- 


LITER AR  Y,  &STHE  TICAL.  2 1 9 

selves,   and    therein  see  but   themselves,  and 
that  darkly. 

Anybody,  with  a  pen  in  his  hand,  can  write 
about  a  given  subject :  few  can  write  into  it. 

Common  sense  should  lie  at  the  bottom  of 
all  enterprizes,  the  literary  and  poetical  as  well 
as  the  practical  and  scientific.  Good  sense  is 
the  ballast  of  genius  ,*  nay,  we  might  say,  it  is 
the  cargo  itself  out  of  which  genius  works  its 
successes. 

To  move  on  a  high  plane  of  sentiment  and 
thought  is  a  privilege  of  the  personages  of 
Shakespeare. 

"  Great  thoughts  come  from  the  heart,"  says 
Vauvenargues. 

Hardly  anywhere  have  we  education,  prop- 
erly speaking ;  that  is,  an  educing,  a  drawing 
out  of  the  inward  powers.  We  teach,  we  do 
not  educate ;  we  inculcate,  we  do  not  unfold  ; 
we  shape  more  than  we  dilate. 

By  the  rarely  beautiful  we  are  subdued,  over- 


220  BREVITIES. 

powered.  In  its  glow  we  feel  that  there  might 
be  a  degree  of  it  on  which  we  could  not  look  : 
the  mind  would  be  smitten  and  blasted,  as  the 
body  may  be  by  a  flash  of  physical  lightning. 

In  order  to  give  life  to  their  straight  lines, 
the  Greeks  drew  them  with  the  hand  and  not 
with  a  rule. 

That  is  never  a  bad  book  which  sets  us  to 
thinking  ;  but  that  is  which  makes  us  feel 
wrongly. 

Capacity  of  admiration,  delight  in  admira- 
tion, is  essential  to  the  poet  When  a  poet 
ceases  to  be  capable  of  admiration,  he  ceases 
to  be  a  poet. 

How  much  is  from  himself,  and  how  much 
has  he  drawn  from  others  —  these  are  cardinal 
questions  to  be  put  to  him  who  offers  us  a  new 
page  of  literature.  Of  genuine  literature  fresh- 
ness is  the  first  quality.  Along  the  lines  should 
glisten  a  life  imparted  from  the  writer's  inmost. 

Analysis  is  decomposition  and,  unchecked, 
leads  to  nullity.  In  literature  as  well  as  science 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL.  221 

the  synthetic  force  must  counteract  and  balance 
the  analytic. 

So  much  verse  is  but  embroidery ;  some 
wrought  with  golden  threads,  some  with  silver, 
but  mostly  with  fading  silk. 

To  put  novels  into  the  hands  of  the  young 
is  to  fire  the  feelings  through  the  imagination, 
which  is  like  applying  a  match  to  the  com- 
bustible materials  you  have  collected  for  build- 
ing a  costly  mansion. 

In  the  lines  of  genuine  poetry  is  ever  per- 
ceptible the  undulation  inherent  in  life ;  and 
this  however  calm  may  look  the  exterior.  So 
much  verse  being  drapery,  thrown  with  more 
or  less  art  over  a  subject,  there  is  in  such  none 
of  that  spring  which  only  issues  from  interior 
movement. 

To  deal  competently  with  a  subject  the 
writer  must  first  get  into  its  centre,  so  as  to 
write  from  within  it. 

To  the  brain-fibre  of  literary  men  may  be 
applied  the  distinctive  epithets  of  the  cotton- 


222  BREVITIES. 

planter  to  his  crop  :  short  staple,  medium,  long 
staple. 

Metaphors  give  spring  and  buoyancy  to  sen- 
tences, widen  the  horizon,  let  in  light  and  air, 
draw  the  reader  from  too  close  a  look  on  the 
ground  before  him,  and  when  fresh  and  ap- 
propriate, lift  the  style  at  once  into  significance 
and  luminousness. 

A  profound  characteristic  of  divine  govern- 
ment is  the  indirect  means  for  compassing  ends. 
To  work  by  indirection  is  to  work  after  the 
method  of  Providence.  If  to  the  selfish  and 
the  sensual  I  hold  out  immortality  as  a  threat, 
I  abuse  it  and  misuse  them :  if  through  per- 
suasion of  its  reality  I  bring  their  minds  into  a 
broader,  freer  state,  I  use  it  wisely  and  serve 
them.  Art  acts  indirectly  :  it  lifts  the  mind  to 
a  higher  mood,  and  out  of  that  springs  the  will 
and  the  power  to  do  higher  things. 

Kant  has  a  fine  definition  of  the  naif : 
"  Nature  putting  Art  to  shame." 

To  say  a  good  thing  fitly,  demands  some 
poetic  gift. 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL.  22$ 

When  you  come  upon  a  poetic  sparkle  you 
feel  suddenly  illuminated. 

So  much  verse  has  shallow  roots. 

Poems  differ  much  one  from  the  other  in 
what  may  be  termed  their  specific  gravity. 
For  example,  "  The  Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore 
at  Corunna"  has  much  more  specific  gravity 
than  Campbell's  "  Battle  of  the  Baltic." 

Profoundly  does  Sir  Egerton  Brydges  say  : 
"  There  is  implanted  in  the  poet  a  spiritual  be- 
ing, which  adds  to  the  material  world  another 
creation  invisible  to  vulgar  eyes." 

The  description  of*  Valeria  by  Coriolanus 
vividly  exemplifies  /0^/V  imagination  :  — 


"  Chaste  as  the  icicle, 

That  's  curded  by  the  frost  from  purest  snow, 
And  hangs  on  Dian's  temple." 

The  drama,  the  poetic  drama,  clings  closest 
to  the  heart  ;  clips  the  man  in  its  arms  ;  is  one 
degree  less  removed  from  the  inmost. 

Deep  in  the  personality  of  the  poet  a  poem 


224  BREVITIES. 

must  have  its  roots,  in  a  soil  rich  and  mellow. 
Out  of  himself  it  must  come,  not  out  of  his 
memory  and  fancy. 

A  poem  demands  roundness,  a  circular  com- 
pleteness in  itself  and  in  its  parts,  such  organic 
fullness  that  there  be  naught  but  lines  like 
those  of  the  egg,  all  representing  a  living  ro- 
tundity, a  palpitating  unity. 

The  moral  of  a  poem  should  lie  at  the  bottom 
of  it,  like  the  stones  of  a  limpid  stream.  Look- 
ing intently,  you  see  the  stones,  solid  and  still, 
the  basic  boundary  of  the  stream.  By  them 
its  pureness  is  preserved  when  the  water 
courses  rapidly ;  for  were  they  not  there,  the 
forceful  rush  would  stir  the  mud  beneath,  mak- 
ing the  whole  current  turbid. 

At  the  core  of  all  verse  there  should  be  emo- 
tion, sentiment,  or  however  may  be  called  the 
offspring  of  healthful  sensibility.  The  intellect- 
ual part  of  poetry  should  be  but  the  transparent 
medium  through  which  you  are  enabled  to  be- 
hold the  treasures  of  feeling,  as  you  gaze  at 
precious  solid  things  that  lie  at  the  bottom  of 
clear  water. 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL.  22$ 

Utterance  is  the  one  end  of  a  poetic  thought, 
whose  other  end  is  deep  in  the  soul  of  the  poet, 
—  at  times  so  deep  that  he  himself  knows  not 
where  it  ends.  To  take  in  the  full  meaning 
and  beauty  of  such  verse,  the  reader  must 
follow  it  into  the  depths  whence  it  shoots. 
Thence,  it  is  that  the  best  poetry  is  slow  to  be 
recognized. 

Poetic  genius  is  a  lively  soul  uttering  itself 
through  the  organ  of  the  beautiful. 

Tennyson  is  one  of  the  poets  who,  like 
Virgil,  have  more  art  than  inspiration. 

Goethe  says,  there  is  poetry  which  is  null 
without  being  bad  ;  null,  because  it  has  in  it 
no  fresh  substance ;  and  not  bad,  because  the 
writer  had,  from  familiarity  with  genuine  mas- 
ters, fine  forms  ever  present  to  his  mind. 

It  is  safe  to  judge  a  writer  by  the  company 
he  keeps ;  that  is,  the  thoughts  he  habitually 
entertains,  and  the  authors  he  likes  most  to 
hold  communion  with. 

That  only  is  literature,  in  the  refined  sense, 
'5 


226  BREVITIES. 

which  continues  to  be  read  :  it  so  continues, 
because  it  embodies  in  the  best  form  the  best 
thoughts  of  the  best  men. 

A  man's  mental  tools  have  their  finest  edge 
put  upon  them  by  his  sensibility  to  the  beauti- 
ful. Many  subjects  he  cannot  penetrate  at  all 
without  this  sensibility,  and  into  all  he  strikes 
the  deeper  for  its  edge. 

The  poet  deals  with  the  new,  with  what  is 
freshly  formed  and  forming  within  him  ;  the 
man  of  understanding  with  what  is  old,  fin- 
ished, hardened. 

In  the  best  literary  work  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  spiritual  joinery. 

Art  implies  fine  nature  well  tilled :  with  all 
your  tending  you  cannot  have  exquisite  flowers 
without  good  soil. 

In  the  fervor  of  work  Shakespeare  had  little 
thought  of  style  ;  writing  out  of  a  mind  so  full 
and  so  poetical,  style  was  a  power  inseparable 
from  his  utterance.  When  he  had  written  a 
scene  or  act  he  went  over  it,  and  then  he  had 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL.  22/ 

a  thought  of  style,  and  made  changes  to  give 
additional  depth,  light,  buoyancy. 

Sense  of  beauty  does  not  gild  the  variegated 
worlds  of  thought,  feeling,  and  perception  ;  for 
gilding  is  too  shallow,  artificial,  and  perishable 
a  process  to  typify  the  action  of  this  great  sen- 
sibility. It  illuminates  with  unexpected  joy 
some  of  the  darkest  throes  of  human  move- 
ment, suddenly  lights  up  with  hopeful  hue 
thoughts  and  deeds  that  a  moment  before  were 
black  with  gloom,  like  mountain-peaks,  emerged 
from  storms,  suddenly  shone  upon  by  the  calm 
beautifying  sun. 

In  Hallam's  "  Literature  of  Europe  during  the 
Fifteenth,  Sixteenth,  and  Seventeenth  Centu- 
ries," there  is  shown  a  sound,  but  not  a  fine, 
still  less  an  active  sensibility.  Now  an  active 
sensibility  is  one  —  might  it  not  be  said  the 
chief  one  ?  —  of  the  pre-requisites  for  a  good 
style. 

Personages,  characters,  make  a  drama,  and 
to  make  it  they  must  be  marked  individualities, 
not  mere  labeled  mouth-pieces. 


228  BREVITIES. 

Out  of  the  extemporaneous  flow  of  his  men- 
tal abundance,  Shakespeare  enriches  barren- 
nesses, peoples  wildernesses. 

In  writing,  especially  in  poetry,  the  transi- 
tions are  vital ;  and  most  vital  are  the  transi- 
tional leaps,  which  only  genius  can  make. 

In  writing,  how  few  styles  have  nerve  and 
sensibility  ;  without  these  the  best  and  highest 
style  is  not  reached. 

In  some  minds  there  are  no  recesses,  where 
stores,  often  unconscious  stores,  lie  waiting  for 
their  occasions. 

Poetry  without  personality  is  thin.  To  bring 
forth  his  personages,  the  mind  of  Shakespeare 
was  big  with  humanity.  When  Shakespeare 
had  dramatically  given  birth,  his  being  was  en- 
larged ;  he  felt  himself  reempowered  by  the 
soul  wherewith  he  had  imbued  his  creation. 

Poetry  needs  primarily  the  sequence  of  feel- 
ing ;  and  this  sequence  only  flows  from  a  full 
inward  spring. 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL.  22<) 

That  there  be  a  poem,  strictly  a  poem,  the  sub- 
ject should  have  a  rooted  steadiness,  an  internal 
repose,  a  generic  solidity.  "  Aurora  Leigh  "  and 
"  The  Gypsey,"  works  of  poetic  genius  though 
they  be,  are  too  tremulous  with  feeling,  too  un- 
steady with  superficial  incident.  They  are  like 
a  fine  head  sculptured  out  of  conglomerate  ;  the 
vision  is  confused  by  the  want  of  unity  and 
purity  of  surface,  and  the  lines  and  outline  are 
broken  by  the  shifting  variety  in  color. 

The  scholastic,  mediaeval  system  of  educa- 
ting through  Greek  and  Latin,  is  the  superficial, 
hollow  system.  Little  more  than  a  thin  shell 
is  imparted.  The  learners  get  no  Sophocles, 
no  Virgil;  no,  not  one  of  them  in  twenty.  They 
do  not  even  get  possession,  practically  and 
permanently,  of  the  languages  in  which  Sopho- 
cles and  Virgil  wrote.  A  teaching  not  super- 
ficial, but  penetrative  and  procreative,  would 
be  to  take  up  Milton  or  Wordsworth,  and  lay 
his  language,  his  thought,  his  poetry,  open  to 
the  hearer.  Aye,  but  who  can  do  this  ?  How 
many  professors  in  all  our  colleges  and  univer- 
sities (so  called)  can  deal  in  thoughts,  ideas, 
expression  and  poetry,  with  critical  discernment 
and  mastery  ?  But  such  teachers,  teachers  of 


230  BREVITIES. 

literary  insight  and  range,  are  just  what  are 
wanted  in  our  higher  institutions  of  educa- 
tion, and  these  institutions,  wanting  such  teach- 
ers, are  but  nominally  high. 

The  first  requisite  for  simplicity  of  thought 
r.  J  style,  is  truth  of  feeling. 

There  is  no  best  poetry  without  flights,  with- 
out steady,  sinewy  soaring  up  to  plains  where 
gleam  lights  spiritual,  that  flash  new  meaning 
upon  life. 

In  poetic  creation  the  feelings  use  the  intel- 
lect as  their  instrument ;  in  poetic  composi- 
tion the  intellect  uses  the  feelings.  Schiller 
was  less  of  a  creator  than  Goethe,  and  more  of 
a  poetic  composer. 

Whatever  he  handles,  the  true  poet  illumi- 
nates with  his  own  soul. 

Consider  what  goes  into  the  making  of  one 
of  Shakespeare's  best  similes  or  metaphors. 
To  follow  these  sunlit  wings  to  their  teeming 
nest,  there  needs  a  kindred  imaginative  nimble- 
ness. 


LITERARY,  ESTHETIC  A  L.  2  3  I 

In  Wordsworth  there  is  a  poetic  thoughtful- 
ness,  and,  in  his  higher  moods,  the  polished 
compactness  that  results  from  this  fine  rare 
combination.  His  best  passages  have  the 
smoothness  and  elasticity  and  roundness  of  an 
ivory  ball. 

From  the  pen  of  none  but  a  great  meditative 
poet,  could  have  come  this  profound  thought  of 
Wordsworth  :  — 

"  Instruct  them  how  the  mind  of  man  becomes 
A  thousand  times  more  beautiful  than  the  earth 
On  which  he  dwells." 

Rhythmic  flow,  in  some  form,  is  part  of  the 
incarnation  of  poetry. 

Any  feeling  which  can  be  lifted  high  enough 
to  be  married  to  emotion,  becomes  thereby  fit 
for  poetic  use.  Emotion  results  from  move- 
ment in  the  higher,  more  generic  feelings. 

They  can  hardly  be  called  poets  who  have 
neither  intellectual  vivacity  nor  poetic  glow 
enough  to  make  flexible  and  distensive  the 
bonds  of  words  in  which  it  is  necessary  to  bind 
sentiment  and  thought. 


232  BREVITIES. 

The  best  of  poetry  is  the  mood  it  creates  ; 
and  herein  the  spiritually-minded  poets  are  the 
most  privileged.  Not  only  do  they  tune  the 
reader  to  a  higher  mood,  but  through  his 
happy  memory  of  this  condition,  they  draw  him 
back  to  their  page,  which,  embalming  in  fit 
melody  the  better  life  of  the  mind,  grows  never 
stale. 

Poetic  ornamentation,  like  the  relief  on  a  tea- 
pot, is  hollow. 

Having  no  rhythm  in  their  thoughts,  the 
poetically  unimaginative  try  to  make  up  for 
this  cardinal  want  with  metrical  smoothness  ; 
but  smoothness  causes  no  radiance,  that  pro- 
ceeding only  from  internal  self-kindled  fire ; 
and  radiance  attests  poetry.  In  their  verse 
there  is  no  sign  of  bemastered  emotion,  of  full 
feeling  wrought  in  its  plastic  warmth  into 
graceful  strength. 

For  a  word  that  is  prosaic  you  can  only  get 
a  poetic  by  going  farther  and  deeper. 

Under  the  touch  of  warm  active  thought 
words  are  malleable.  Thought  is  their  com- 


LITERARY,  MSTHETICAL.  233 

mander,  and  not  only  enranks  them,  but,  like 
a  Caesar  into  his  soldiers,  breathes  into  them  its 
own  spirit,  so  that  the  dull  become  lively,  and 
the  weak  strong. 

By  poetic  imagination  it  is  that  recondite 
relations  are  detected. 

In  the  poetically  imaginative  stroke  many 
rays  flash  together  from  various  quarters  upon 
a  single  point,  making  that  point  to  sparkle 
with  concentrated  lustre. 

The  composer  says,  "  Here  is  a  proper  place 
for  a  figure,"  and  straightway  he  manufactures 
one  ;  but  figures,  to  do  their  duty  of  enlivening 
while  they  illustrate,  should  flame  up  out  of 
the  warm  air  that  has  just  been  liberated  by 
the  busy  play  of  thought.  In  poetry  the  play 
of  thought  is  everything. 

Of  a  truth,  says  Goethe,  the  head  takes  in  no 
work  of  Art  but  in  company  with  the  heart. 

Through  the  music  there  is  in  him,  the  poet 
is  enabled  to  make  each  natural  thing  utter  the 
music  there  is  in  it.  He  is  the  enraptured 
spokesman  of  man  and  nature. 


234  BREVITIES. 

A  good  reader  should  have  lights  and  shades 
in  his  voice,  and  what  Sainte-Beuve  calls  in- 
sinuations. 

Excellence  in  style  depends  primarily  on 
clearness  in  thinking,  and  fineness  of  percep- 
tion, this  fineness  implying  some  glow  as  well 
as  health  of  sensibility. 

Style  goes  beneath  the  surface :  manner  is 
superficial. 

To  write  good  poetry,  the  writer  must  have 
not  only  a  good  ear,  but  something  very  good 
to  listen  to  internally. 

The  office  of  poetry  is  to  set  forth  the  best 
possibilities  of  the  feelings.  The  poet  is  poet 
by  having  within  him  more  of  the  finer  life  of 
feeling. 

Sustained  rapidity  in  poetry  implies  volume 
of  thought,  and  thought  so  animated  by  feeling 
as  to  be  urged  ever  fervently  onward. 

Naught  is  perfectly  simple :  every  thing  or 
thought  is  more  or  less  combined,  complicated, 


LITERARY,  &STHETICAL. 

with  others.  The  more  intense  the  concentra- 
tion of  many  in  one,  the  more  life  and  power ; 
witness  the  similes  and  metaphors  of  Shake- 
speare. 

The  want  of  the  sense  of  the  ideal  is  a  chief 
cause  of  the  unprogressiveness  of  certain  tribes 
and  races. 

The  spontaneous  has  the  highest  quality. 
Foremost  of  human  products  is  ranked  a  great 
Poem,  the  offspring  of  disinterested  impulses 
and  deep  emotions,  wrought  into  shape  by  in- 
tellect keen  and  clear. 

Mannerism  is  a  declension  resulting  from 
one-sidedness  ;  but  superior  men  are  subject 
to  it,  because,  although  a  defection  from  the 
purest  style,  it  is  a  help  to  some  who  have  more 
will  than  symmetry.  It  helps  them  with  them- 
selves, by  allowing  their  faculties  freer  play, 
through  the  indulgence  of  their  stronger  incli- 
nations, their  disproportioned  predominances 
of  gift,  which  indulgence  is  the  basis  of  man- 
nerism ;  and,  by  thus  giving  more  fluency  and 
muscle  to  their  movements,  it  helps  them  with 
readers.  They  write  more  and  better  than  if, 


236  BREVITIES. 

by  a  severer  curb  on  their  proclivities,  they 
subdued  their  utterance  to  the  clear  quiet  tone 
of  simplicity.  This  is  exemplified  in  Carlyle, 
and,  in  a  finer  way,  in  Tennyson. 

Good  poetry  is  the  highest  abstraction.  The 
poet  lives  most  in  his  mind ;  for  a  mark  of  his 
being  a  poet  is,  that  his  mind  be  lighted  up 
with  visions  and  imaginations,  which  draw  him 
to  them  as  his  best  company.  On  his  brain  his 
need  of  the  beautiful  is  ever  breeding  fresh 
figures  and  conjunctions  ;  and  when  these  are 
vivid  enough  to  take  shape  under  the  pen,  he 
is  abstracted  from  the  earth  and  its  forms,  and 
swings  up  into  an  Empyrean  of  his  own  cre- 
ating, where  he  moulds  other  forms,  and,  out 
of  his  thought,  forges  other  realities  and  pos- 
sibilities. 

In  some  poetry  there  is  too  much  individu- 
ality, and  not  enough  universality. 

In  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream"  it  is  as 
though  in  a  calm  summer  night,  standing  on 
an  eminence,  were  revealed  to  us  by  distant 
lightning,  without  noise,  first  in  one  quarter  of 
the  horizon,  then  in  another,  rich  variegated 


LITERARY,  MSTHETICAL.  237 

scenery,  every  burst  of  glow  laying  bare  a  dif- 
ferent landscape,  each  landscape  vying  with 
each  for  the  palm  of  beauty. 

The  poet  whose  mind  is  become  corrupt,  as 
surely  forfeits  his  creative  birthright,  as  the 
rose  its  perfume  through  blight,  or  the  fingers 
their  cunning  through  palsy. 

Is  there  not  more  poetry  in  Bacon's  Essays 
in  prose  than  in  Pope's  in  verse  ?  Pope  said 
his  say  better  in  verse,  because  he  had  a  met- 
rical gift,  a  gift,  be  it  said,  very  different  from 
the  rhythmic  gift,  and  as  inferior  to  that  as 
talent  is  inferior  to  genius.  This  metrical  gift 
helped  to  polish  and  condense  his  thoughts, 
besides  giving  them  the  benefit  of  measured 
cadence  and  the  piquancy  of  rhyme.  Men  who 
have  "  the  accomplishment  of  verse"  in  larger 
measure  than  poetic  imagination,  will,  with  a 
slight  infusion  of  poetry,  seem  to  be  better 
poets  than  they  are,  being  to  the  many  ac- 
ceptable from  their  very  deficiency  in  the 
higher  endowment,  the  major  part  of  readers 
understanding  and  assimilating  talent  more 
readily  than  genius. 

The  dramatic  claims  to  be  the  highest  form 


238  BREVITIES. 

of  poetry,  because,  that  a  drama  be  good,  the 
poet  must  condense  into  small  space  characters 
that  shall  be  life-like  and  poetic,  at  once  in- 
dividual and  generic.  Cardinal  qualities  of 
good  dramatic  poetry  will  be  the  liveliness, 
pointedness,  rapidness,  caused  by  interplay 
among  individualities  that  are  evoked,  pro- 
voked, by  contrasts  and  collisions,  the  wrest- 
lings of  talk  and  the  rivalries  of  action,  action 
giving  to  words,  phrases,  and  rhythm,  a  brisk 
percussive  movement.  Without  characteriza- 
tion there  is  no  genuine  drama :  the  evolution 
of  character  through  close,  frequent,  diversified 
contacts,  is  the  essence  of  dramatic  as  dis- 
tinguished from  lyric  and  epic  treatment.  But, 
besides  sprightly  individuality,  springing,  as  it 
were,  outward,  there  must  be  generalization,  as 
profund  as  apt.  Each  personage,  while  distinct 
and  individual,  should  be  so  thoroughly  human 
as  to  be  the  easy  mouthpiece  of  thoughts  and 
sentiments  that  reach  far.  The  weightier  sen- 
tences will  be  unconsciously  symbolical. 

From  the  mind  of  Shakespeare,  thoughts, 
sentiments,  men,  women  leap  forth,  each  into 
its  right  place,  aglow  with  life,  and  motion,  and 
grace  ;  Shakespeare's  brain  is  splendidly  vivi- 
parous. 


III. 

CONDUCT,  MANNERS. 

PEOPLE  in  high  places,  who  are  not  benef- 
icent, are  out  of  place. 

In  this  "  villainous  world  "  there  is  almost  as 
much  unclean  praise  as  malevolent  censure. 

To  the  opinions  and  creeds  received  from 
their  fathers,  men  hold  as  to  the  houses  and 
lands  they  have  inherited.  Spiritual  and  ma- 
terial they  lump  together,  treating  him  who  at- 
tacks their  opinions  like  him  who  steals  their 
cattle,  not  perceiving  that,  instead  of  a  theft, 
the  destruction  of  opinions  is  a  barter,  whereby 
they  may  gain  a  hundred  fold.  Thoughts  are 
subject  to  higher  laws  than  things. 

In  many  an  instance,  when  a  man  speaks 
of  his  conscience,  conceit  is  mistaken  for  con- 
science. 

By  continuous  breach  of  the  moral  law,  men 


240  BREVITIES. 

forfeit  mental  growth.  Napoleon  and  Cromwell 
grew  not  wiser  as  they  grew  older.  Their 
minds  did  not  ripen,  they  hardened. 

Many  of  the  old  monasteries  were  founded 
by  repentant  reprobates  ;  and  the  early  sins  of 
their  founders  bore,  in  many  cases,  fuller  crops 
than  their  later  virtues. 

When  a  man  readily  gives  ear  to  a  slander,  he 
betrays  fellow-feeling  with  the  malice  whence  it 
sprang. 

We  seek  happiness  by  outwardly  heaping  on 
our  puny  selves  all  we  can,  each  one  building, 
with  the  joint  force  of  his  intellect  and  selfish- 
ness, a  reversed  pyramid,  under  the  which  the 
higher  it  rises,  the  more  he  is  crushed  on  the 
small  spot  his  small  self  can  fill. 

We  are  capable  of  life-long  joy.  Continuous 
varied  fruition  might  be  the  sum  of  earthly 
existence.  If  our  lives  do  not  bring  out  this 
sum  it  is  because  we  have  misplaced,  or  mis- 
laid, or  overlooked,  or  misreckoned  with,  some 
of  the  counters. 


CONDUCT,  MANNERS.  24! 

"  You  cannot  serve  God  and  Mammon  : " 
nay,  you  cannot  serve  yourself  and  Mammon. 

The  spokes  of  the  wheel  are  helpless  until 
bound  together  by  the  rim. 

Christianity  promises  such  moral  splendors, 
that  men,  refusing  to  credit  these  as  an  earthly 
possibility,  translate  its  consummations  to  the 
superearthly  sphere.  Priesthoods  have  always 
fostered  this  incredulity,  which  opens  to  them 
the  imagination  as  their  work-field,  where  til- 
lage is  much  lighter  than  in  a  tangible  soil.  It 
is  easier  to  saw  air  than  to  saw  wood  ;  easier 
to  put  the  wretched  off  with  sanctimonious  as- 
surances of  celestial  compensations,  than  to 
wrestle  with  earthly  ills  ;  easier  to  preach  of 
Heaven  to  come  than  to  abolish  a  present  Hell. 
The  conscientious  pastor  knows  how  almost 
fruitless  a  task  it  is,  when,  not  content  with 
stale  ritual  repetitions  and  wordy  exhortations, 
he  labors  practically  to  purge  and  vivify  his 
flock.  With  all  his  will  and  toil  he  brings  little 
to  pass.  His  theological  tools  are  dull :  what 
steel  there  was  in  them  has  worn  off.  1852. 

Children  keep  us  at  play  all  our  lives. 
16 


242  BREVITIES. 

Rich,  inactive  people,  whose  main  business 
is  the  spending  of  money,  lose  their  sense  of 
the  value  of  time,  and  lead  a  lethean  life. 

When  we  cease  to  learn,  life  loses  its  salt- 
ness. 

Allopathy  is  monarchical  and  ecclesiastical, 
inasmuch  as  it  looks  to  something  out  of  the 
body  to  cure  the  body.  Under  the  action  of 
drugs  the  body  is  passive,  only  rousing  itself 
against  their  disturbing  or  poisonous  action. 
Hydropathy  is  democratic  :  the  body  must  bestir 
itself  for  its  own  salvation.  Self-reliant,  it  must 
use,  for  its  protection  and  re-instatement,  its 
native  internal  resources.  Allopathy,  acting 
from  without,  and  by  means  of  foreign  sub- 
stances, is  one-sided,  depressing,  weakening : 
Hydropathy  is  all-sided,  invigorating,  purifying. 
Of  a  human  body  weighing  one  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds,  one  hundred  pounds  are  pure 
water ;  hence  the  efficacy  of  water  as  a  curative 
agent. 

Idleness  is  the  root  of  most  evil ;  and  the 
minds  that  are  busy  to  keep  other  minds  idle, 
are  doing  the  basest  work  that  men  can  do. 


CONDUCT,  MANNERS.  243 

Give  me  the  man  who  will  not  desert  him- 
self. 

A  human  being  can  only  be  developed  by 
work.  He  who  will  not  work  fails  to  fulfill  his 
manhood :  he  who  cannot  work  is  less  than  a 
man. 

There  is  a  logic  in  everything.  The  best 
knowledge  is  that  by  which  this  logic  is  mas- 
tered. 

Among  our  American  rights  is  not  the  right 
of  ignorance  ;  for  ignorance  is  an  absolute 
obstacle  to  self-government.  To  keep  our  track 
clear  of  this  grossest  obstruction,  individual 
means  are  insufficient.  For  its  own  weal's  sake, 
for  its  life's  sake,  the  State  must  work  actively 
against  ignorance. 

A  lie  is  the  most  hateful  of  things.  We  say, 
As  true  as  the  Sun.  A  lie  is  an  eclipse  of  light. 
Were  all  people  to  lie,  we  should  be  shrouded 
in  a  moral  darkness  blacker  than  a  starless  and 
moonless  midnight. 

Allowing  for  imaginative  amplification,  still 


244  BREVITIES. 

the  chivalrous  protection  of  women  in  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  denotes  a 
vast  enlargement  of  humanity  at  that  period> 
and,  like  all  manifestations  from  the  depths  of 
human  feeling,  is  a  splendid  promise  sure  to 
be  fulfilled. 

Never  did  the  greatness  of  a  cause,  or  of 
ideas,  or  of  principles,  lift  Napoleon  above  him- 
self. He  was  never  inspired. 

The  union  of  many  weak  threads  makes  a 
strong  rope ;  but  the  union  of  many  fools  be- 
gets not  wisdom,  but  only  worse  folly. 

Lafayette  was  not  a  great  man,  but  he  was 
a  man  of  great  friendships.  He  was  the  friend 
of  struggling  America,  the  friend  of  freedom, 
and  the  friend  of  Washington. 

The  Greek  for  man  is  anthropos,  which  means 
looker  up. 

The  human  mind  is  so  constituted  that  i£ 
must  busy  itself  much  with  small  things.  If 
wholesome  details  are  not  within  its  reach,  it 
will  resort  to  frivolities,  gossip,  worldly  petti- 


CONDUCT,  MANNERS.  245 

ness.  Give  it  productive  attractive  work,  in 
and  with  nature,  and  you  forestall  empty  of- 
ficiousness,  unprofitable  busy-ness,  morbid  self- 
gnawing. 

Few  minds  are  capable  of  broad  generaliza- 
tion. Of  prominent  public  men  not  one  in 
ten  has  a  comprehensive  grasp  and  innate 
room  for  expansion.  High  places  are  mostly 
attained,  not  through  mental  superiority,  but 
through  impudence,  activity,  and  talent  for 
pushing. 

Love  kindles  love :  hate  engenders  hate. 

Work  is  a  tie  between  man  and  nature :  it 
should  be  a  bond  of  brotherhood  among  men. 
Through  heartless  unmitigated  competition  it 
is  a  source  of  envies,  jealousies,  hates. 

If  a  man  shuts  his  religion  up  in  a  pew,  or 
keeps  it  as  a  solitary  solace,  which  sheds  hardly 
a  ray  on  others,  he  hides  his  light,  not  under 
a  bushel,  but  under  the  smoke  and  ashes  of  a 
barren  egotism. 

Whenever  there  is  a  deep  disturbance  and 


246  BREVITIES. 

broad  displacement  among  the  elements  of  any 
large  whole,  there  will  be  violent  explosive  con- 
vulsions, in  order  to  restore  the  equilibrium 
needed  for  health  and  even  for  life.  Such  dis- 
turbances imply  strong  organic  vitality  in  the 
constituents.  To  this  deep  general  perturba- 
tion, a  people  incapable  of  long  development 
and  high  culture  will  not  be  subject,  its  ele- 
ments not  being  quick  and  various  enough  for 
large  and  pervasive  breach  of  equilibrium. 
But  for  a  great  progressive  people,  ascending 
or  already  ascended,  to  a  high  civilization,  equi- 
librium can  only  be  restored  by  an  English  re- 
bellion of  1640,  or  a  French  Revolution,  or  an 
American  civil  war. 

So  many  men  there  are  about  whom  the 
most  interesting  thing  to  other  people  is  their 
last  will  and  testament. 

The  child  is  not  only  father  to  'the  man,  but 
brother,  too,  most  men  in  mature  years  approv- 
ing themselves  childish.  Their  natures  not 
having  ripened  and  deepened  with  years,  they 
continue  to  be  willful  and  passion-governed, 
much  busied  with  trifles,  exhibiting  an  infantile 
tenaciousness  for  their  petty  pretensions,  an 


CONDUCT,  MANNERS.  247 

unreasoning  persistence  in  narrow  opinions,  an 
unabated  interest  in  the  ephemeral. 

The  basis  of  cooperative  success  is  sym- 
pathy. The  conditions  of  wise  associative  work 
insure  progress  and  purification. 

The  soul,  being  endued  with  a  beautiful  body, 
seeks  to  improve  the  body  by  dress  and  adorn- 
ment, which  may  be  looked  upon  as  a  con- 
tinuance of  the  soul's  incarnation.  This  is  a 
transcendental  excuse  for  the  time  and  pains 
women  give  to  the  arts  of  the  toilet. 

"  It  has  been  noted,"  says  Lord  Bacon,  "  that 
those  who  ascribe  openly  too  much  to  their  own 
wisdom  and  policy,  end  unfortunate."  A  good 
epigraph  for  an  essay  on  self-conceit. 

History  abundantly  proves  that  priesthoods 
exhibit  supreme  unscrupulousness,  audacity,  im- 
piety ;  unique  invention  in  torture  and  murder  ; 
utter  undutifulness  and  shamelessness  in  their 
means  to  gain  and  keep  power ;  the  coldest 
selfishness  ;  unfailing  readiness  to  subject  the 
spiritual  to  the  carnal,  from  motives  of  greed  or 
ambition. 


248  BREVITIES. 

The  best  men  of  "  society  "  have  all  travelled  ; 
if  not  geographically,  at  least  they  have  been 
far,  and  have  learnt  much  from  converse  with 
all  sorts  of  people,  and  from  study  of  the  deep- 
est and  wisest  pages. 

Men  cling  to  the  past,  not  because  it  is  old, 
but  because  it  is  part  of  themselves.  They  live 
under  and  sleep  under  it,  as  under  a  roof  that 
belongs  to  them.  It  becomes  a  form  of  that 
Proteus,  selfishness.  Nothing  is  more  egotistic 
than  stiff  conservatism. 

Among  some  of  the  cultivated  heads  in 
America  there  prevails  a  spiritual  egotism, 
whereby,  instead  of  referring  all  things  and  be- 
ings (themselves  included)  up  to  God,  they 
would  draw  God  down  to  them,  and  would 
imbue  Him  with  themselves.  It  is  the  rednctio 
ad  absurdum  of  individualism,  subjectivity  de- 
lirious ;  and  it  sways  at  times  even  sober  sane 
men.  Believing  themselves  to  move  under 
upright  motives,  some  are  inly  demoralized 
(just  as  Robespierre  was)  by  a  self-estimation 
so  intense  as  to  be  unconscious,  impelling  them 
to  make  their  own  thought  and  will  supreme. 
When  it  happens  that  one  of  these  is  justly 


CONDUCT,  MANNERS.  249 

conscious  of  not  being  sordid  or  greedy  or 
vulgarly  ambitious,  he  is  driven  to  still  greater 
extremes  by  this  very  consciousness,  which, 
through  the  subtle  yeast  of  egotism,  becomes 
the  fomenter  of  only  a  deeper  selfishness.  He 
will  push  his  theories  and  convictions  into 
practice  at  whatever  cost.  One  proof  of  the 
vice  in  the  extreme  principles  of  such  men 
(and  it  is  overwhelming  proof)  is,  that  in  pursu- 
ing their  ends  they  exhibit  more  hate  than 
love. 

More  people  are  kept  from  injustice  by  pru- 
dence than  by  principle. 

Taking  medicine  is  another  form  of  the 
weakness  that  makes  us  look  out  of  ourselves 
for  help. 

By  some  who  would  weigh  Washington  his 
nobility  of  nature  is  overlooked  ;  and  some  do 
not  give  prominence  to  his  integrity  and  large- 
ness of  soul.  I  have  read  one  attempt  to  char- 
acterize Washington  by  a  writer  who  thinks 
his  chief  quality  was  constancy  ! 

If  you  wish  to  mark  your  contempt  for  a 
man,  tell  him  a  lie. 


2. 50  BREVITIES. 

Introverted  attention,  referring  to  self  all 
that  is  said,  inattentiveness  from  want  of  sym- 
pathy, causing  indifference  of  manner,  these 
are  signs  of  habitual  inward  self-engrossment, 
outwardly  exhibited  in  bad  manners,  which 
have  their  chief  source  in  too  much  self-regard 
and  not  enough  regard  for  others,  too  much 
inlook  and  not  enough  outlook.  Good  manners 
are  objective  :  many  people  are  not  only  too 
subjective,  but  narrowly,  churlishly  subjective. 

To  make  a  "  good  society  "  are  wanted  people, 
and  a  good  many  of  them,  who  live,  not  upon 
their  money,  but  upon  their  minds  ;  not  even 
upon  the  money  their  minds  may  earn. 

The  Egyptians  used  to  call  a  library  "the 
remedy  for  diseases  of  the  soul." 

The  larger  and  richer  a  nature  is,  the  more 
objective  it  is  ;  that  is,  the  more  easily  and 
fully  are  its  sympathies  enlisted  for  objects  and 
beings  beyond  itself,  and  the  more  clearly  can 
it  see  what  is  outside  of  itself.  There  is  to  a 
fly  no  objective,  except  where  his  feet  stand  or 
his  mouth  sucks.  Exclusive  subjectivity  is 
egotism  strung  to  intenseness.  We  are  all  too 


CONDUCT,  MANNERS.  2$  I 

much  contracted  and  heaped  up  into  ourselves, 
having>  as  Montaigne  says,  our  sight  shortened 
to  the  length  of  our  noses. 

All  society,  whatever  its  form,  rests  on  work, 
grows  out  of  work. 

The  victim  of  envy  is  not  the  envi^,  but  the 
envier. 

In  many  men  there  is  no  echo  to  one  who 
speaks  wisely  ;  in  some  from  want  of  thought, 
in  some  from  want  of  the  right  kind  or  degree 
of  feeling. 

In  the  personality  of  a  man  we  take  a  loving 
interest,  in  proportion  as  in  his  doings  or  his 
writi  ngs  he  has  expanded  beyond  himself  into 
acts  and  thoughts  of  cordial  value. 

We  are  ever  interposing  and  obtruding  our- 
selves between  us  and  our  good. 

To  manners,  as  to  literature,  grace  is  a 
quality  needed  to  complete  them.  Grace  is 
from  within. 


252  BREVITIES. 

If  men  would  but  be  upright  and  fearless. 
Fear  not,  and  work  on  at  thy  mental  enlarge- 
ment, trusting  to  the  Most  High.  Above  all, 
fear  not.  He  who  fears  is  possessed  with  a 
devil,  and  a  mean  devil. 

Man  is  distinguished  from  animals  by  fore- 
sight, and  man  from  man  by  foresight.  All 
wrong,  injustice,  selfishness,  is  shortsighted. 

The  worldly  gentleman  is  apt  to  wear  a  coat 
of  coldness,  woven  from  within. 

Detractors  are  great  levelers,  downwards. 

In  some  people  what  is  called  manners  is 
an  excess  of  manner. 

Proportion  is  a  mighty  power.  Onesidedness 
makes  and  keeps  many  people  wrong  in  regard 
to  great  principles. 

Good  intellectual  faculties  give  sight :  noth- 
ing but  sensibility  gives  insight. 

So  many  able  men  are  always  seeking  them- 
selves and  not  the  truth. 


CONDUCT,  MANNERS.  2$$ 

Is  not  Guizot's  a  rather  shallow  hard  head  ? 

Life  has  many  deep,  rich  rhythms  which  are 
as  yet  only  heard  by  a  few,  through  a  rare  in- 
ward hearing. 

Wishes,  desires,  that  we  ought  not  to  gratify, 
we  can  turn  to  account  for  our  good,  if  we  will 
arrest  their  hurtful  outward  flow,  and,  by  con- 
trolling, make  of  them  sources  of  inward  for- 
tification. 

In  the  long  run  everything  depends  upon 
the  sel£  The  inward  of  a  man  must  be  active 
and  cooperative,  in  order  that  the  best  oppor- 
tunities be  profited  by,  that  the  most  pros- 
perous circumstances  be  not  baffled  or  wasted. 

The  spirit  of  Christian  charity,  of  brotherly 
respect,  is  finely  exhibited  and  characteristic- 
ally expressed  in  the  following  passage  of  a 
letter  from  Goethe  to  Lavater.  Sentences  like 
these  are  often  met  with  in  Goethe,  and  make 
one  think  of  him  as  a  higher  Franklin.  "  Most 
thankful  should  we  be  that  into  every  living 
being  Nature  has  put  so  much  healing  power, 
that  when  there  is  a  lesion  anywhere  it  can 


254  BREVITIES. 

knit  itself  together  again ;  and  what  are  our 
thousandfold  religions  other  than  thousand- 
formed  manifestations  of  this  inward  healing 
power  ?  My  plaster  does  not  suit  thee,  nor 
thine  me :  In  our  Father's  apotheca  are  many 
recipes.  So  I  have  nothing  to  answer  to  your 
letter,  nothing  to  contradict  in  it :  but  on  the 
other  hand  much  to  place  beside  it  We 
should  put  our  confessions  of  faith  side  by 
side  in  two  columns,  and  thereupon  build  a 
bond  of  peace  and  tolerance." 

Especially  in  regard  to  the  relations  of  the 
sexes,  people  will  one  of  these  days  be  in  all 
their  inward  motions  and  outward  doings  as 
virtuous  as  a  dressy  congregation  looks  when 
it  has  just  seated  itself,  some  spring  Sunday,  in 
a  carpeted  pew-cushioned  church  that  has  a 
richly-paid  rector. 

A  man  who  has  a  sense  of  the  ideal  carries 
about  with  him  an  hourly  educator. 


IV. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

THE  mummies  of  Egypt  are  a  type  of  un- 
enlightened conservatism,  —  a  childish  effort 
to  perpetuate  corporeal  bulk,  to  eternize  the 
perishable,  to  subordinate  essence  to  form,  to 
deny  death.  The  result  is  a  mummy. 

Hereditary  oligarchs  are  puppets  to  whom 
motion  is  imparted  by  wires  inserted  under 
ground  into  the  dead  bodies  of  their  fore- 
fathers. 

The  remedy  for  England  is  to  turn,  not  her 
waste  lands  to  use,  but  her  waste  mind,  her 
waste  intellect  and  feeling.  This,  her  priceless, 
inexhaustible  domain,  is  half  tilled  in  patches. 

In  England  so  many  people  look  as  though 
they  were  waiting  for  my  lord. 

On   the  continent  of  Europe    it    looks   as 


256  BREVITIES. 

though  government  had  been  made  first,  and 
man  afterwards. 

The  great  recent  discoveries  of  Gall,  of 
Fourier,  of  Priesnitz,  all  combine  to  make  ap- 
parent the  resources,  the  incalculable  vigors, 
the  inborn  capabilities  of  man. 

Forms  soon  usurp  upon  the  substance  they 
were  designed  to  hold.  Ceremony  and  hy- 
pocritical corporeal  salutations  get  to  be  a 
substitute  for  genuine  politeness ;  religion  is 
smothered  under  ritual  observances  ;  paper 
money  drives  out  metal,  which  it  was  devised 
to  represent. 

The  Greeks  and  the  English  seem  to  be  the 
only  two  nations  possessing  enough  sap  and 
vigor  and  fullness  of  nature  to  reproduce  them- 
selves in  distant  soils,  through  colonists  that 
swarmed  off  from  the  parent  hive. 

Cherished  should  be  the  man  whose  mind  is 
too  large  to  be  filled  by  creeds,  and  too  manly 
to  close  itself  against  any  wants  of  humanity. 
The  mental  home  of  the  truest  men  is  among 
principles,  and  principles  are  infinitely  ex- 
pansive. 


MISCELLANEOUS. 

People  nominally  worship  God  one  day  in 
the  week,  and  really  worship  Mammon  seven. 

The  Bible  should  be  studied  with  activity  of 
spirit.  Its  great  heart  will  not  beat  but  to 
the  throbbing  of  yours.  Just  to  read  it  pas- 
sively, traditionally,  dulls  the  very  susceptibility 
through  which  it  is  to  be  taken  in.  Not  thus 
will  you  find  God  in  the  Bible.  Who  has  not 
first  sought  Him  in  his  own  heart  and  in  the 
life  around  him,  will  scarcely  find  Him  there  at 
all.  God  is  not  locked  up  in  the  Bible :  He  is 
at  all  times  around,  within  us.  Strive  with 
Jesus  to  feel  his  presence.  Then  you  may 
hope  for  promotion,  purification,  inspiration  : 
then  your  heart  may  bring  forth  biblical  chap- 
ters ;  for,  the  best  there  is  in  the  Bible  came 
out  of  the  human  soul,  touched  to  inspired 
utterances  by  the  awakened  inward  divinity. 

The  priests  of  Rome  discourage  intercourse 
with  God  through  the  Bible,  which  is  already 
at  one  remove.  Themselves  they  constitute 
the  sole  interpreters  of  the  divine.  The  heav- 
enly will  can  only  be  expressed  by  distillation 
through  the  foul  alembics  of  priestly  greeds 
and  ambition.  Hence,  where  they  long  dom- 
'7 


258  BREVITIES. 

inate,  religion  becomes  materialized,  and,  for 
uplifting,  soul-purging  communion  with  God, 
is  substituted  abject,  demoralizing,  belittling 
submission  to  priesthood. 

An  ape  is  a  creature  that  has  approached 
the  gates  of  reason,  and  stands  there  grinning 
and  jabbering  in  tragi-comical  ignorance  of 
his  nearness  to  the  regal  palace. 

Envy,  like  venomous  reptiles,  can  only  strike 
at  short  distances. 

There  is  no  deeper  law  of  nature  than  that 
of  change. 

Everything  that  we  do  being  a  cause,  he  is 
the  most  sagacious  who  so  does  that  each 
cause  shall  have  its  good  effect.  This  practical 
long-sightedness  is  wisdom,  the  want  of  it  fool- 
ishness. To-days  are  all  fathers  of  to-morrows, 
but  like  many  other  fathers,  they  sadly  neglect 
their  paternal  duties.  To-day,  if  it  thinks  at 
all,  thinks  of  itself,  and  leaves  to-morrow  to 
shift  for  itself.  Life  is  a  daily  laying  of  eggs, 
some  to  be  hatched  to-morrow,  some  next 
month,  some  next  year,  some  next  century. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  2$$ 

Many  are  not  hatched  at  all,  but  rot  or  are 
broken ;  many  come  prematurely  out  of  the 
shell,  and  perish  from  debility ;  and  thus  that 
much  life  is  wasted.  Charity  is  long-sighted, 
selfishness  is  short-sighted.  And  yet,  so  de- 
fective is  our  social  constitution,  that  a  man 
may  be  long-sighted  in  using  his  neighbor  for 
his  own  ends.  Thus  doctors  —  who  are  short- 
sighted when  they  take  their  own  physic,  which 
they  seldom  do  —  are  long-sighted  when  they 
give  it  to  their  patients  ;  for  the  more  of  it 
these  take,  the  oftener  the  doctor  is  called. 
It  were  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  parsons  are 
long-sighted  because  they  set  their  minds  so 
much  upon  the  next  world  ;  their  long-sight- 
edness consists  in  directing  other  people's 
thoughts  to  that  quarter,  while  from  the  super- 
mundane spectators  they  draw  the  wherewithal 
to  be  content  with  this.  Lawyers  are  short- 
sighted when'  they  encourage  litigation  ;  the 
long-sighted  know  that  the  perverted  passions 
of  civilized  men  will  bring  grist  enough  to 
their  mill  without  their  stir.  The  man  who 
sells  rum  is  short-sighted,  but  less  so  than  he 
who  drinks  it.  Authors  are  very  short-sighted 
when  they  write  to  please  the  public,  instead 
of  writing  to  please  the  truth.  Expedients  are 


26O  BREVITIES. 

short-sighted,  principles  long-sighted  ;  and  not- 
withstanding the  apparent  prosperity  of  some 
liars,  nothing  is  so  long-sighted  as  truth. 

We  Americans  let  not  the  past  accumulate 
upon  us  :  we  make  clean  work  as  we  go.  We 
keep  the  present  lively,  because  we  are  ever 
snatching  a  new  present  from  across  the  con- 
fines of  the  future.  We  are  always  "  going 
ahead  ; "  that  is,  building  up  the  future  out  of 
itself  and  not  solely  out  of  the  past.  We  don't 
wait  for  the  future  :  we  rush  in  pursuit  of  it. 

Classification  is  the  highest  function  of  in- 
tellect ;  it  brings  order  out  of  chaos.  It  is 
both  analysis  and  synthesis.  The  higher  the 
department  of  universal  life,  the  keener  of 
course  must  be  the  intellectual  insight  that  can 
detect  its  organic  law.  To  order  minerals  is 
feebler  work  than  to  order  morals.  The  man 
who  classes,  needs  to  have  a  kind  of  creative 
mastery  over  his  material.  He  intellectually 
recreates.  The  savage,  who  has  mastery  over 
nothing,  but  is  a  serf  of  Nature,  has  no  power 
of  classification. 

To  weave  the  wondrous  form  wherewith  life 


MISCELLANEOUS.  26 1 

invests  itself  in  humanity,  the  heart  works 
ceaselessly,  and  every  organ,  member,  part  and 
particle  of  the  living  frame  works,  each  joyfully 
in  its  sphere,  in  unison  with  the  heart,  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  common  fabric.  But  a 
continuation  and  extension  of  the  unconscious 
work  of  the  heart  and  lungs  is  the  conscious 
work  of  the  head  and  hand  of  man,  whose  end 
is,  to  feed,  to  clothe,  to  lodge,  to  develop,  to 
delight  his  body  and  his  mind.  All  work,  the 
unconscious  and  the  conscious,  is  but  life  meth- 
odized, that  is,  life  made  more  living,  more  in- 
telligent, and  thence  more  productive.  And 
thus  work,  which  is  the  condition  and  result 
of  life,  becomes  the  means  of  its  perpetuation, 
its  extension,  its  elevation.  All  work  may  be 
delightful ;  and  as,  the  healthier  the  body  is, 
the  more  joyfully  and  thoroughly  the  heart  and 
its  allies  perform  their  unconscious  task,  so 
in  a  healthy  social  organization  all  work,  the 
greatest  and  the  least,  ceasing  to  be  repulsive 
and  becoming  attractive  and  delightful,  would 
be  proportionately  productive.  A  consumma- 
tion this,  not  barely,  most  devoutly  to  be  wished, 
but  most  surely  to  be  accomplished,  by  that 
high  work  which  the  intellect  exalted  by  love 
and  faith  is  equal  to  performing. 


262  BREVITIES. 

Nature  rejects  with  contempt  hereditary  aris- 
tocracy. 

In  our  present  misorganized  society  helpless- 
ness is  the  condition,  not  of  nine  in  ten,  but 
of  all.  The  wisest  and  wealthiest  are  encom- 
passed by  exposure,  dangers,  calamity.  The 
most  of  what  is  done  on  earth  is  of  our  own 
making  or  allowing.  Heaven  is  just,  lets  us 
do  for  our  good  or  ill,  and  helps  us  when  we 
help  ourselves.  Put  we  our  shoulders  to  the 
wheel,  the  Hercules  is  instantly  at  our  side. 
We  make  the  beds  we  lie  in  ;  not  you  or  I, 
but  you  and  I,  and  all  the  you's  and  I's  that 
surround  us.  Against  our  needs  and  woes  you 
or  I  can  do  little,  but  you  and  I  everything. 
Association,  which  has  made  banks  and  rail- 
roads, can  do  much  better  and  higher. 

There  is  nothing  that  some  people  are  more 
ignorant  of  than  their  own  ignorance. 

Unsightly  is  an  old  face  haunted  by  the  vices 
of  youth. 

Credulity  is  a  characteristic  of  weakness. 
Imagination  precedes  Reason.  Fancies  are  a 


MISCELLANEOUS.  263 

loose  substitute  for  knowledge.  Hence  the 
unreasonable  creeds  of  young  nations,  fastened 
upon  them  by  priestcraft,  whose  criminal  prac- 
tice it  has  been,  and  is  still,  by  terrifying  the 
imagination  to  subjugate  the  reason.  The  first- 
born of  priestcraft  was  the  Devil. 

Priests  are  ever  shuffling  over  the  leaves  of 
old  books  :  they  seek  God  in  traditions  and 
hearsays,  and  the  dim  utterances  of  the  livers 
of  old  ;  they  abide  by  the  outgivings  of  obsolete 
mystics :  they  re-assert  the  beliefs  of  anti- 
quated seers  :  they  grovel  and  grope  in  the 
darkness  and  dawn,  to  find  stakes  planted  by 
the  crude  beginners  of  the  world,  to  which,  by 
grossest  cords,  they  would  bind  to  the  past  our 
forward-reaching  souls.  The  future,  too,  they 
suborn  and  would  monopolize.  Out  of  imagi- 
nations that  are  shallow,  unhallowed,  meagre, 
foul,  they  would  construct  both  the  past  and  the 
future.  That  they  may  be  paid  for  furnishing 
rush-lights,  they  cultivate  darkness,  and  becur- 
tain  with  creeds  and  dogmas  the  human  taber- 
nacle against  the  sun  of  truth.  Those  who  ap- 
peal to  the  God  of  light,  and  to  the  upright  soul 
of  man,  against  their  sophistications,  and  usur- 
pations, they  crucify.  Audaciously  they  dub 


264  BREVITIES. 

themselves  the  ministers  of  God,  they  who  are 
especially  not  God's  ministers  but  men's.  Spir- 
itual insight,  moral  elevation,  rich  sympathies, 
these  are  the  tokens  whereby  the  divinely  or- 
dained are  signalized.  Are  candidates  for  any 
priesthood  admitted  or  rejected  by  these  signs  ? 
Not  by  inborn  superiorities  of  sensibility,  but 
by  acquired  proficiencies,  by  intellectual  adop- 
tions are  they  tested.  This  creed,  these  ar- 
ticles, this  ritual,  —  do  they  accept  these,  then 
are  they  accepted.  To  be  learned  in  humanity, 
a  vivid  learning,  which  the  large  heart  imbibes 
without  labor,  this  is  not  their  title  ;  but  to  be 
learned  in  theology,  a  lifeless  learning,  which 
the  small  head  can  acquire  by  methodical 
effort.  They  would  live  and  make  others  live 
by  the  dead  letter,  and  not  by  the  living  law. 
The  dead  letter  is  the  carcass  of  what  has  been, 
or  what  is  imagined  to  have  been.  The  living 
law  is  what  is  :  it  is  not  written,  it  is  forever 
in  process  of  being  written,  on  the  heart  of 
man  by  the  hand  of  God. 

Disproportion  is  disqualification.  Too  much 
is  unwieldy  :  too  little  is  feebleness.  A  giant 
is  of  no  more  use  than  a  dwarf.  A  man  seven 
feet  high  finds  his  extra  foot  a  daily  incum- 


MISCELLANEOUS.  26$ 

brance.  A  man  of  more  head  than  heart  is 
dangerous  :  a  man  of  more  heart  than  head  is 
a  victim. 

In  one  of  the  "  Latter  Day  Pamphlets,"  Mr. 
Carlyle  asks  tauntingly,  What  have  the  Amer- 
icans done  ?  —  We  have  abolished  Monarchy  ; 
we  have  abolished  hereditary  Oligarchy ;  we 
have  sundered  Church  and  State  ;  we  have  so 
wrought  with  our  English  inheritance,  that 
most  Englishmen  better  their  condition  by 
quitting  the  old  home  and  coming  to  the  new. 
We  have  consolidated  a  State,  under  whose  dis- 
interested guardianship  the  cabined  and  strait- 
ened of  the  Old  World  find  enlargement  and 
prosperity.  We  have  suppressed  standing  ar- 
mies ;  we  have  decentralized  government  to 
an  extent  that,  before  our  experiment,  was 
deemed  hopeless  ;  we  have  grown  with  such 
dream-like  rapidity,  as  to  stand,  after  little 
more  than  a  half-century  of  national  existence, 
prominent  on  the  earth  among  the  nations  ; 
and  this,  in  large  measure,  through  the  wisdom 
of  political  organization,  whereby  such  scope 
is  given  to  industry  and  invention,  that  not 
only  are  our  native  means  profitably  developed, 
nut  the  great  influx  of  Europeans  is  healthfully 


266  BREVITIES. 

absorbed.  We  have  in  seventy  years  put  be- 
tween the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  an  Empire 
of  twenty-five  millions,  who  work  more  than 
any  twenty-five  millions  on  earth,  and  read 
more  than  any  other  fifty  millions.  We  have 
built  a  State  at  once  so  solid  and  flexible,  that 
it  protects  all  without  oppressing  any.  Our 
land  is  a  hope  and  a  refuge  to  the  king-crushed 
laborers  of  Europe,  and  from  the  eminence 
above  all  other  lands  to  which  it  has  ascended, 
by  our  forecast,  vigor,  and  freedom,  it  is  to  the 
thinker  a  demonstration  of  the  upward  move- 
ment of  Christendom,  and  a  justification  of 
hopes  that  look  to  still  higher  elevations. 

Mr.  Carlyle's  sneers  at  our  lack  of  heroism 
would  be  unworthy  of  him,  from  their  very 
silliness,  were  they  not  more  so  from  their  sour 
injustice.  Let  any  People  recite  its  heroic 
deeds,  on  flood  or  field,  since  we  were  a  nation, 
and  we  will  match  every  one  of  them.  And  in 
the  private  sphere,  where  self-sacrifice,  devo- 
tion, courage,  find  such  scope  for  heroic  virtues, 
our  social  life  is  warm  with  them :  but  this  is 
no  theme  for  words.  For  his  unworthy  ones, 
we  deem  well  enough  of  Mr.  Carlyle  to  believe, 
that,  when  disengaged  from  the  morbidly  sub- 
jective, and  therefore  blinding  and  demoraliz- 


MISCELLANEOUS.  267 

ing,  moods,  to  which  he  is  liable,  he  is  ashamed 
of  having  printed  them.  It  looks  somewhat  as 
though  this  passage  had  been  written  just  to 
give  us  an  opportunity  of  victorious  retort,  or 
to  tempt  us  into  an  exhibition  of  our  national 
propensity  to  brag,  —  a  propensity,  be  it  said, 
which  is  national  in  every  nation  we  know 
anything  of,  whether  English,  French,  German, 
or  Italian.  We  only  beat  them  in  bragging, 
just  as  we  beat  them  in  ploughs  and  statues, 
in  clippers  and  steamboats,  in  whalemen  and 
electric  telegraphs,  in  cheap  newspapers  and 
cheap  government.  They  all  do  their  best 
at  bragging,  and  so  do  we,  —  and  we  beat 
them.  1852. 

The  moral  world  is  better  lighted  than  here- 
tofore. Selfishness  succeeds  somewhat  less 
grossly  :  conscience  has  a  louder  voice. 

Such  is  the  power  of  relative  proportion  that 
the  same  chemical  atoms,  commingled  in  differ- 
ent ratios,  give  substances  of  most  diverse  na- 
tures. Of  men  the  same  holds  good,  and  in  a 
still  higher  degree. 

The  truer  religion  is  the  simpler  and  more 


268  BREVITIES. 

silent  it  is  ;  but  simplicity  and  silence  suit  not 
priestcraft. 

Never  make  pretentions  which  you  cannot 
justify.  Therefore  never  strive  to  seem  young 
when  you  are  not  young  :  time  will  expose  you 
to'daily  mortification.  Time  is  vital  to  us  :  by 
trying  to  live  against  time  we  maim  ourselves. 

The  lawyer  is  retrospective  :  his  masters  are 
behind  him  :  the  authority  of  the  past  controls 
him :  his  studies  are  of  the  decisions  of  dead 
men  and  their  interpretations  of  other  dead 
men's  ordinances.  Thus  his  mind  is  apt  to  be- 
come inclosed  within  conventional  juridical 
bounds.  Hence  lawyers  are  seldom  great 
statesmen,  the  function  of  the  statesman  being, 
to  grasp  large  present  relations.  The  lawyer's 
domain  is  chiefly  what  has  been :  the  states- 
man's what  is,  and  what  is  to  be. 

Man  is  of  the  vine  nature :  he  puts  forth 
tendrils  that  need  props  and  supports  in  his 
fellow-men  :  and,  failing  these,  he  misses  his 
altitude  and  proper  prosperity,  and  droops  and 
creeps. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  269 

When  with  thoughtful  watchfulness  we  study 
creation  and  its  processes,  we  find  true  the  re- 
mark of  Playfair,  "  How  much  further  reason 
may  sometimes  go  than  imagination  can  ven- 
ture to  follow." 

The  "  cloth"  of  the  clergy  is  too  often  cut 
into  a  cloak. 

Life  is  a  universal  boundless  whole,  whereof 
each  one  as  a  part  is  valuable  in  proportion 
to  the  quality  of  his  relations  to  the  whole. 

Satire  implies  a  high  state  already  attained 
and  a  higher  attainable.  Humanity  is  never 
satirized  in  its  lower  conditions. 

Between  truth  and  freedom  there  is  a  close 
interdependence  and  union.  Jean  Paul  says 
that  to  romance  (or  to  lie)  is  derived  from 
Roman,  the  word  with  this  signification  having 
come  into  use  after  the  Romans  had  become 
enslaved. 

In  air  made  foul  by  human  exhalations,  a 
material  filth  penetrates  to  the  finest  fibres  of 
the  brain,  weakening  and  impeding  the  mind's 


2/0  BREVITIES. 

action.  The  difference  between  the  "  black 
hole  of  Calcutta  "  and  many  of  our  school-rooms 
is  this  :  in  the  black  hole  scores  died  in  a  few 
hours  :  from  the  school-rooms  hundreds  go 
forth  to  die  in  a  few  years,  from  effects  of  the 
same  cause.  A  building,  especially  a  public 
one  which  is  liable  to  crowds,  should  be  a 
breathing  organism,  ever,  like  the  lungs,  throw- 
ing out  used  air  and  drawing  in  fresh. 

Present  intuitions  of  genial  deep-thoughted 
men,  even  of  the  deepest,  are  in  part  a  fruit  of 
past  intuitions,  culture  generating  an  atmos- 
phere whereon  the  largest  brains  are  uncon- 
sciously fed. 

In  the  frenzied  heat  of  brain-fever  France 
engendered  Marat  and  Robespierre,  deformed 
monsters  of  self-sufficiency,  whom  in  her  de- 
lirium she  hugged  as  comely  healthy  children. 

Some  people  are  practically  honest  from  rev- 
erence for  property.  They  will  sin  against 
you  or  me,  against  truth,  against  the  Holy 
Ghost,  but  not  against  property. 

Napoleon  was  a  colossal  torso. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  2JI 

From  one  of  the  pages  of  Lacordaire's  "  Con- 
ferences de  Toulouse,"  I  copy  this  tremendous 
sentence  :  "  Mahomet,  initie  a  1'Evangile,  a  re- 
vetu  de  chair  la  felicite  souveraine  ;  et  ce 
fantome  de  son  Paradis  persecute  encore  la 
honteuse  imagination  de  ses  croyants,  seul 
peuple  qui  n'ait  pas  connu  la  pudeur." 

Reason  should  always  hold  the  reins  of  the 
mind.  If  they  are  loosely  held,  the  mind 
stumbles,  or  runs  off  the  track,  or  runs  away. 

We  speak  of  "  here  and  hereafter ; "  but 
man's  life  is  an  everpresent  here,  an  everlast- 
ing now.  The  hereafter  is  ever  turning  into 
here:  the  future  is  forever  becoming  now. 

Few  men  have  the  kind  and  degree  of  mental 
vitality  needed  to  throb  with  the  life-currents 
which  slake  and  vivify  the  organism.  The 
minds  of  most  men  being  rather  mechanical 
and  material  than  dynamic  and  psychical,  to 
them  the  human  organism  is  too  much  a 
mechanism.  Medical  practitioners  work  by 
rule  and  routine  more  than  by  insight  and  law. 
They  can  analyze  the  dead  blood :  they  can- 
not track  the  pulsing  life-stream  Few  of  them 


2/2  BREVITIES. 

fully  apprehend  the  plastic  power  of  nature  ; 
and  hence  they  so  often  pull  down  where  they 
should  build  up,  mutilate  or  destroy  where  they 
should  save. 

The  next  generation  will  have  to  reverse  the 
accustomed  phrase  at  the  beginning  of  many 
biographies,  and  say,  "  His  parents,  though  rich, 
were  honest." 

The  universally  innate  human  religious  ap- 
titude was  in  the  Semitic  people  intensified  by 
the  aridity  of  part  of  their  soil  and  the  neigh- 
borhood of  vast  deserts.  By  the  daily  malefi- 
cent presence  of  these,  their  helplessness  and 
their  dependence  on  the  unseen  were  brought 
fearfully  home  to  them,  and  incessantly.  From 
the  want  of  resources  and  of  breadth  in  their 
territory  there  was  among  them  an  enforced 
simplicity  of  earthly  occupations,  which  left 
them  leisure,  and  gave  them  disposition,  to  fill 
their  minds  with  thoughts  of  the  power  that 
seemed  to  press  on  them  in  the  desert  and  to 
stint  them  in  their  fields  and  streams.  Thence 
their  notion  of  Deity  was  more  of  might  than 
of  beneficence.  Their  God  was  a  God  of 
anger  rather  than  of  love.  Their  conception 
of  a  life  beyond  the  grave  was  null,  or  faint. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  2/3 

There  are  people  in  whom  the  best  thing  is 
their  appetite  for  dinner. 

Equality  before  the  law,  man-made  law,  is 
one  of  the  great  conquests  of  latter  times,  —  a 
conquest  bearing  in  its  train  inestimable  prof- 
its. A  relative  equality  is  this,  equal  rights 
in  presence  of  all  human  tribunals  ;  and  such 
impartiality  is  a  prerequisite  for  full  liberty. 
But  absolute  equality  is  an  absurdity,  and 
men's  attempt  to  establish  it  is  destructive  of 
free  development  and  free  use  of  faculties  de- 
veloped, a  revolt  against  nature  involving  tyr- 
anny over  man.  Men  are  born  with  unequal 
gifts,  moral  as  well  as  intellectual,  and  this 
inequality  involves  vast  consequences,  personal, 
political,  and  social.  Moreover,  the  wider  the 
range  of  this  inequality,  the  better  the  ma- 
terials for  a  solid  and  attractive  and  elastic 
social  structure. 

To  show  man's  innate  capacity  of  goodness, 
to  exhibit  him  as  born  of  God  and  not  a  cross 
between  God  and  the  Devil  (as  he  is  repre- 
sented by  what  is  called  Christian  theology), 
this  is  a  task  for  the  present  and  coming  gene- 
rations. 

18 


2/4  BREVITIES. 

Providence  is  large  in  its  designs,  and  uses 
minute  instruments.  Common  statesmanship 
is  small  in  its  designs,  and  uses  large  means 
for  shallow  plans. 

When  you  talk  to  a  Romish  priest  and,  in  a 
less  degree,  to  a  Protestant  clergyman,  you  feel 
that  you  are  talking,  not  to  a  self-directed  in- 
dividual man,  to  a  whole  human  being,  but  to 
the  fraction  of  a  partial  sum  of  men,  to  a  bit 
of  a  segment  of  a  limited  circle,  to  the  cog  of 
a  wheel,  whose  action  is  circumscribed  and 
defined  by  its  position.  And  is  not  this  the 
case  when  talking  to  most  men,  lay  as  well  as 
clerical  ?  Few  but  are  mere  fragments  of 
humanity,  cabined  in  set  opinions,  tethered  to 
inexorable  creeds  and  constitutions. 

The  Puritans  were  a  one-sided  race,  and 
that  one  side  was  much  on  the  side  of  self. 
Yet,  in  modern  development,  what  a  great  and 
indispensable  part  they  played. 

The  man  who  cannot  learn  new  thoughts 
becomes  stagnant.  If  he  lives  in  a  progressive 
community  he  is  left  uncomfortably  behind,  he 
and  his.  The  generations  that  stride  forward 


MISCELLANEOUS.  2/5 

walk  past  him  or  over  him.  Thus  it  was  with 
the  French  noblesse  after  1789;  and  so  it  is 
now  with  "  old  families "  that  will  not  learn. 
In  these  electric  times  they  are  thrust  from 
their  thrones  by  families  that  have  aptitude  for 
new  things.  An  old  race  that  cannot  take  in 
new  principles  thereby  shows .  that  it  is  ex- 
hausted, is  become  mentally  barren.  Witness 
China,  and  the  East  generally. 

The  life  of  man  on  earth  is  but  a  beginning  ; 
and  beginnings  are  tentative,  crude,  imperfect. 
Hence,  blunders,  vices,  crimes  ;  and  hence,  men 
being  so  frail  and  shortsighted,  so  many  bad 
men  are  allowed  to  get  into  high  places. 

Is  not  the  addiction  to  rites  and  cermonies, 
the  attaching  of  essential  importance  to  forms, 
a  sign  of  the  want  of  sensibility  ?  An  inward  va- 
cancy manifests  itself  in  an  outward  ostentation. 

Noteworthy  is  it  how  our  civilization  is  built 
on  piles,  so  to  speak,  resting  so  much  on  human 
imaginations  and  ordonnances,  on  ecclesiastical 
dogmas  and  legislative  enactments.  Out  of  a 
crude  natural  state  man  rises  gradually  into  a 
cultivated  artificial  state.  Out  of  this,  too,  he 


276  BREVITIES. 

will  pass,  and  through  self-projections  and 
emancipations  reach  the  ripe  natural  state, 
where  dogmatic  theology  and  jurisprudence 
and  all  makeshifts  will  have  been  outgrown, 
and  humanity  will  securely  rest  on  the  God- 
given  law. 

The  imagination  is  the  truest  of  mental 
powers.  It  reveals  to  us  our  inmost  self ;  and 
so  truly,  that  we  dare  not  make  known  all  its 
promptings  and  pictures. 

Dreary  and  dark  is  the  outlook  of  the  ma- 
terialist :  closed  is  his  mind  against  the  light 
and  warmth  of  higher  spheres,  which  poten- 
tially belong  to  mankind  :  to  him  there  come, 
from  the  unknown  vast,  no  flashes  too  brilliant 
to  be  borne,  save  for  a  moment,  by  earthly 
man,  hinting  at  and  prefiguring  radiant  trans- 
earthly  possibilities.  When  in  "  Achilleis  " 
Goethe  describes  the  Hours  as  lavishing  upon 
and  within  the  abode  of  Jupiter  "  so  much  light 
and  life  that  man  could  not  have  borne  it,  but 
the  gods  it  delighted,"  he  depicts  the  life  of  a 
higher  state  of  being,  which  low-thoughted 
materialism  will  not  entertain,  but  something 
of  which  there  must  have  been  at  all  times 


MISCELLANEOUS.  2/7 

many  to  conceive,  or  man  would  have  groped 
forever  in  the  caves  of  savagery.  Had  man 
not  been  the  subject  of  restless  spiritual  up- 
reachings,  of  instinctive  heavenward  aspira- 
tions, no  philosophical  plane  could  ever  have 
been  reached  ;  and  thence,  no  materialist  would 
have  gained  the  culture  which  enables  him  to 
strive  to  span  the  universe  with  his  tape-line 
of  phenomenal  sequences,  to  seize  the  mystery 
of  being  through  chemical  manipulations,  to 
weigh  the  essences  of  life  in  grocer's  scales. 

In  1456  Pope  Calixtus  III.  issued  a  bull 
against  a  comet.  The  absurd  impotence  of 
this  proceeding  was  some  antidote  to  its  blas- 
phemous venom.  The  four  centuries  that, 
since  the  day  of  impious  Calixtus,  have  rolled 
themselves  out  of  the  bosom  of  eternity,  spark- 
ling more  and  more  with  the  divine  light  of 
poetic  and  scientific  revelation,  have  left  un- 
healed,  untouched,  the  presumptuous  vision  of 
the  Papacy.  Its  bad  distinction  is  that  it  will 
not,  cannot,  be  enlightened.  In  Nature,  in 
Civilization,  in  Christendom,  it  stands  alone  in 
stolid  unchangeableness,  self-exiled  from  the 
Paradise  of  progression  by  ecclesiastical  ambi- 
tion, by  self-worshipping  loneliness.  As  bias- 


2/8  BREVITIES. 

pheraous  to  day  as  in  the  age  of  Calixtus,  it 
looks  upon  every  free-thinking;  free-speaking 
mind  as  a  cometary  intrusion,  a  menacing  irreg- 
ularity, a  defiant  insolence,  whose  light  and 
being  it  would,  if  it  could,  extinguish  by  a  bull ; 
in  its  arrogant  irreverence  blind  to  the  deep 
religious  fact,  that  every  such  mind  is  launched 
by  the  same  infinite  Might  that  projects  comets 
and  places  the  stars.  How  many  Protestants 
are  there  who  denounce  Popery,  and  yet  prac- 
tice its  blasphemy  against  free  thought  and  free 
speech  ? 

In  every  department  of  work  the  highest 
achievement  implies  the  organizing,  coordinat- 
ing power.  Without  it  a  man  can  hardly  be 
great,  whether  'he  be  scientist,  statesman,  or 
poet. 

The  power  of  capital  lies  in  the  intelligence 
which  creates  and  preserves  it. 

The  minds  of  many  people  are  so  imprisoned 
in  narrow,  false  theologies  that  they  look  out 
upon  the  world  as  a  convict  does  through  his 
prison-bars. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  279 

So  many  men  are  afraid  of  God  !  Most  tragic 
cpndition  !  They  stick  to  the  old  man-made, 
miry,  thoroughfares,  too  timid  to  strike  into  the 
God-given  paths  that  open  on  all  sides,  smil- 
ing and  glittering  with  safe  solicitations,  with 
promises  as  brilliant  as  sure.  Disabled,  hectic 
theologies  they  prefer  to  science,  contracted 
dogma  to  expanded  reason.  More  pitiable  are 
they  than  monkeys,  who  stand  senselessly 
chattering  before  the  temple  of  Thought  and 
Speech,  and  have  no  power  to  enter. 

The  men  who,  lacking  the  insight  which 
comes  chiefly  from  sympathy,  are  by  nature 
incompetent  to  grasp  and  appreciate  the  pro- 
found principles  and  springs  of  life  and  motion 
that  underlie  and  energize  all  being,  especially 
human  being,  these  are  the  men  who  put  them- 
selves forward  to  read  and  interpret  the  secrets 
and  the  will  of  the  prime  Motor,  men  for  the 
most  part  as  limited  in  intellectual  range  as  in 
sensibility. 

One.  thing  keeps  fresh  a  day,  another  a 
month,  another  a  year,  another  a  century,  an- 
other a  thousand  years  :  truth,  justice,  love, 
keep  themselves  forever  fresh. 


280  BREVITIES. 

A  man  cannot  better  spend  his  life  than  in 
learning  how  to  live. 

Oriental  despotism  dominating  the  law  and 
ritual  of  the  Jews,  minute  directions  were  pre- 
scribed for  all  individual  doings,  compressing, 
smothering  personal  liberty  and  self-direction 
The  tendency  of  the  spiritual  teaching  of 
Jesus  was  to  emancipate  men  from  this  priestly 
domination  and  interference. 

There  should  be  no  hostility  between  the- 
ology and  science  ;  for  theology,  or  knowledge 
of  the  ways  and  will  of  God,  should  be,  and,  if 
sound,  will  be  and  must  be,  founded  on  science ; 
that  is,  on  sifted,  methodized  knowledge. 

Violent  death  is  a  proof  of  incompleteness,  of 
failure.  Two  men  or  two  armies,  destroying 
one  another,  show  that  man  is  not  yet  out  of 
the  phase  of  animalism,  and  needs  farther  purg- 
ing through  swift  destruction. 

Human  society  is  founded  on  sensualism  ; 
sensualism  in  a  healthy  sense.  The  structure 
is  weakened,  or  threatened,  or  deformed,  when 
the  foundations  obtrude  above  the  ground. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  28 1 

Water  is  more  strengthening  than  whiskey, 
more  exhilarating  than  wine. 

Every  dollar  of  capital  extant  is  the  product 
of  work,  work  of  muscle  and  work  of  mind  ; 
and  a  part  of  the  function  of  capital,  its  chief 
part,  should  be,  to  react  upon  the  mind  and 
muscle  of  a  community,  for  the  profit,  improve- 
ment, and  elevation  of  all  its  members.  The 
material  is  the  creation  of  the  spiritual,  and 
should  serve  its  maker. 

No  new  thing  under  the  sun  !  Everything 
under  the  sun  is  new,  except  what  is  dying  or 
dead  ;  and  death  itself  is  but  a  passage  to  a 
new  condition  of  life.  Whatever  has  life  re- 
news itself  momently  :  when  it  ceases  to  renew 
itself,  it  is  losing  its  present  form  of  being. 
Constant  renewal  is  the  very  life  of  being. 
Every  sunrise  is  new,  every  soul  is  a  new  soul. 
Because  all  men  and  things  are  alike,  each  is 
therefore  not  the  less  new :  no  two  among  the 
myriads  that  are  and  have  been  are  precisely 
alike,  and  this  infinitude  of  unlikeness  is  a 
token  of  the  newness  of  each.  Here  is  ex- 
hibited the  boundless  prodigality  of  mate- 
rials and  resources  at  command  of  the  sleep- 


282  BREVITIES. 

less  productiveness  in  the  animating  principle. 
"  Behold,  I  make  all  things  new."  Timoleon 
was  a  new  man :  Are  William  the  Silent  of 
Orange  and  Washington,  because  they  bear 
strong  likeness  to  Timoleon,  less  lustrously 
new  ?  Was  not  Patrick  Henry  a  new  orator  ? 
Was  not  Shelley  a  new  poet  ?  Unceasing  cre- 
ativeness  is  the  very  essence  of  the  originating, 
sustaining,  informing,  Mind.  Hence  the  daily, 
hourly  rejuvenation  of  the  earth,  and  all  that 
is  on  it,  by  the  pauseless  pulse  of  the  Eternal 
Soul. 


THE  END. 


